Province leads country in population growth

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This article was published 16/12/2016 (3386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s population grew at the fastest pace in the country between October of last year and October of this year, according to new quarterly data released on Thursday.

Statistics Canada said Manitoba gained 22,601 new residents during the October-to-October period, for a growth rate of 1.74 per cent.

That easily edged out second-place Alberta, which posted growth of 1.61 per cent.

It was also well above Canada’s growth rate for the same period, which was 1.24 per cent.

The Manitoba Bureau of Statistics noted 1.74 per cent is also a new modern-day record for Manitoba in terms of the strongest growth for any 12-month period.

The previous record was set earlier this year, when the province posted growth of 1.51 per cent between the first quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of this year (April to April).

In between those two record-setting performances, Manitoba saw its population growth slow to a much more moderate 0.44 per cent between the second quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year.

The addition of 22,601 new residents since October of last year included a gain of 5,830 in the third quarter of this year alone.

The gains boosted Manitoba’s overall population to 1,323,958 as of Oct. 1, which is fifth-highest among the 10 provinces.

The Bureau of Statistics said a large portion of the latest 12-month gain was due to record-breaking immigration levels in the province.

It said 17,392 new immigrants arrived here between the fourth quarter of last year and the fourth quarter of this year.

“That is… what is sort of pushing a lot of this,” it added.

It said when Manitoba was attracting between 15,000 and 16,000 new immigrants a year earlier in this decade, many thought that would be as good as it would get. But clearly that wasn’t the case.

Partially offsetting the big immigration gains was the net loss of 5,812 people to other provinces and territories in Canada over the first three quarters of 2016. That was up from a net loss of 5,456 people in the first three quarters of 2015.

The bureau said most of the net losses were to three provinces: British Columbia (2,529), Ontario (1,817) and Alberta (1,123).

The biggest net gains for Manitoba during that same period were from Nunavut (32), Prince Edward Island (14) and the Yukon (11).

In an interview last June, Manitoba’s then-chief statistician, Wilf Falk, noted that with the oil-industry downturn, Alberta hasn’t been luring as many people from other provinces as it has in the past.

Falk, who recently retired, also said an influx of Syrian refugees was a significant contributor to Manitoba’s population gains since last year.

Statistics Canada said Canada added 157,207 new residents in the third quarter of this year, boosting the country’s population to 36,443,632 as of Oct. 1. In absolute terms, the July-to-October increase was the largest increase since July 1971, when the current system of demographic counts came into effect.

It said Canada’s third-quarter population gain included 68,241 new immigrants. That number was down from 78,895 in the third quarter of 2015, it added.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca