Due mostly to a decline in the number of overseas students, Canada’s temporary resident population has fallen to its lowest level since the pandemic.
According to the most recent figures from the government’s statistics department, Canada’s population increased by nearly nothing in the first quarter of this year, with the biggest decrease in temporary residents since the pandemic being driven by a decline in international students.
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“The first quarter of 2025 marked the sixth consecutive quarter of slower population growth following announcements by the federal government in 2024 that it would lower the levels of both temporary and permanent immigration,” Statistics Canada said in a statement last week.
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With the decrease in temporary residents offsetting normal seasonal gains from January to April, the change—which amounted to 0.0% growth and 20,107 additional individuals in real terms—was the second-slowest quarterly growth rate in Canada since records began.
In Q1 2025, there were 11% fewer study permit holders than there were in the same period the previous year, with British Columbia and Ontario—the provinces with the largest numbers of overseas students—being the hardest hit.
Source: Statistics Canada
Although the rate of reduction was far slower than that of study permit holders, the number of work permit holders decreased during this quarter as well, and they are still about three times larger than they were in Q1 2022.
However, the number of protected persons and asylum seekers in Canada increased for the thirteenth straight quarter, hitting a record high of 470,000 on April 1, 2025.
Even though it was less than in previous years, Canada’s population grew entirely due to international migration in 2025, which counterbalanced the country’s aging population, which has had more deaths than births every quarter since 2022.
In the meantime, Canada is feeling the effects of the fall in foreign enrollment, with an anticipated $2.7 billion in losses this year.
According to reports last month, more than 5,000 jobs had been cut at Canadian universities, with major Ontario colleges like Centennial losing over 750 jobs.
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