- Immigrants are shifting away from major cities like Toronto and Vancouver toward mid-sized urban centers.
- National urban growth slowed to 1.0% between 2024 and 2025 due to tighter policy controls.
- Mid-sized cities like Edmonton and Calgary recorded growth rates near 3.0% driven by affordability.
(CANADA) — Immigrants are increasingly avoiding Canada’s largest cities, with newcomers redirecting toward mid-sized urban centres and smaller communities as Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver see sharp slowdowns in population growth.
The shift is reshaping housing demand, job matching and service pressures across the country, and it is changing what settlement looks like in practice for provinces and municipalities that plan for schools, transit, health care and newcomer supports.
Settlement patterns and what shapes them
Settlement patterns refer to where newcomers choose to live after arrival and where they remain or move over time. These patterns are shaped by costs, work opportunities and the rules that govern who can come and for how long.
Recent data points to a redistribution away from the three biggest metros toward other metropolitan areas and surrounding regions. When newcomers spread differently, demand for rentals, transit and settlement services shifts as well.
Recent national and metropolitan growth trends
Canada’s 41 census metropolitan areas grew by just 1.0% between July 2024 and July 2025, down sharply from 3.5% the previous year. That slower growth still indicates expansion, but it marks a break from the rapid urban growth of the prior year.
A census metropolitan area, or CMA, is a population centre used to track urban growth and migration patterns, making it a standard lens for understanding where newcomers concentrate and where demand for rentals, transit and settlement services rises fastest.
Toronto recorded virtually no population change between July 2024 and July 2025, while Montréal and Vancouver posted minimal growth, largely tied to steep reductions in non-permanent residents. Vancouver also saw a net loss of temporary residents, reversing gains from the previous year.
Those changes matter because non-permanent residents, including international students and temporary workers, have played an outsized role in recent urban growth and in rental demand near colleges, downtown job clusters and transit corridors. A sudden change in those flows can alter the pace of rental market pressure and the demand for language training, credential recognition supports and other services often concentrated in major metros.
Policy influences on settlement
Federal policy has played a direct role in reshaping these patterns. The government introduced caps and tighter controls on temporary resident intake, reducing non-permanent residents who previously drove urban growth.
The trend also reflects preferences among permanent immigrants, who are increasingly choosing different destinations. Permanent residents and temporary residents often make different location decisions, partly because permanent status supports longer-term planning around housing, schooling and career paths.
Affordability and employment conditions intersect with those policy levers, pushing and pulling newcomers toward places where rents, commuting costs and the path to stable work can look more manageable. The result is a multi-causal shift: policy changes amplify existing pressures tied to housing and labour markets.
Where newcomers are going
Mid-sized cities have absorbed more of the redirected flows. Edmonton, Calgary, and Moncton all recorded growth rates close to 3.0%, with permanent immigration playing the leading role alongside interprovincial migration and employment-driven settlement.
The changing “destination mix” also appears within provinces that include Canada’s biggest gateways. Data shows new immigrants are no longer concentrating as heavily in Toronto and Montréal, with rising shares of newcomers settling in smaller cities and surrounding regions within Ontario and Quebec.
Newcomers are prioritizing affordability, job availability, and long-term stability over the traditional appeal of major metropolitan areas. That shift can influence where employers find labour supply and where local governments need to expand settlement supports, public transit capacity and housing approvals.
The redistribution is also easing pressure on housing markets in major urban centres while supporting economic growth in emerging destinations. In practical terms, that can mean slower growth in rental demand in the largest cities at the same time as tighter vacancy pressures emerge in places that previously had smaller newcomer populations.
Labour-market and demographic implications
Demographic patterns help explain why the shift quickly shows up in labour markets. Immigrants settling in urban areas tend to be 25 to 54 years old, and more than 64% of new immigrants arriving between 2016 and 2021 belonged to that age range.
That working-age concentration shapes how dispersion affects local economies. As newcomers spread beyond Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver, employers in other metropolitan areas can gain access to more workers, while newcomers may face different tradeoffs in wages, rent levels, transit options and access to specialized services.
The same age group often seeks professional growth, access to higher education and economic opportunities, and recent dispersion suggests those opportunities are increasingly perceived to exist outside the largest metros. Secondary markets can offer different pathways into jobs and, in some cases, a faster transition into stable housing.
Rural settlement
Rural Canada remains a smaller destination in the overall picture. Only 13% of recent immigrants settle in rural communities compared to urban areas, and only 6% of migrants to rural areas come from other Canadian provinces or territories.
That gap highlights that rural settlement differs from interprovincial moves into rural areas, and it reflects constraints that can include the availability of jobs, transportation links and established community networks. Even as immigrants disperse from the biggest metros, the data still shows Canada remains largely an urban settlement story.
Recent shifts in population growth by metro areas
Observed changes in metro growth reflect both slower inflows of temporary residents and different choices by permanent immigrants. These shifts alter rental demand, public service needs and local labour supply in varied ways across metropolitan areas.
Below is explanatory context to lead into an interactive tool that will show detailed metro-by-metro changes, growth rates and the composition of residents (permanent vs temporary). The tool will provide the visual and tabular presentation of recent metro shifts.
Policy context and future immigration levels (2026-2028)
Policy choices for 2026 through 2028 could reinforce the patterns already visible in 2024 and 2025, especially through changes that affect temporary residents, whose numbers can move faster than permanent admissions.
Canada’s 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan projects permanent resident admissions at around 380,000 per year, compared with the 395,000 admitted in 2025. Temporary resident admissions are projected to fall to 385,000 in 2026, declining further to 370,000 in 2027 and 2028.
Because temporary residents often cluster in the largest cities around major employers and schools, shifts in those totals can quickly show up in the growth rates of big CMAs and in rental demand.
This section provides explanatory prose for an interactive policy tool that will let users explore how different admissions scenarios (permanent and temporary) translate into projected population changes across cities, and how those scenarios relate to housing and infrastructure pressure. The tool will display the scenario outputs visually.
Implications for major and emerging destinations
For Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver, the current trend signals slower growth than the previous year even as the broader national picture remains one of continued population gains.
For Edmonton, Calgary, Moncton and other growing destinations, it raises questions about whether housing supply, transit and settlement services can scale fast enough to match stronger inflows anchored by jobs and permanent immigration.
Where newcomers settle influences where employers find labour, where local governments must plan for schools and transit, and where settlement services such as language training and credential recognition need to be expanded.
As settlement patterns continue to evolve, the practical effects will include variations in rental market pressure, shifts in demand for public services and new challenges for matching newcomers to local employment opportunities.
