Moving In, Moving On & Moving Up: Examining Population Movements to and from Rural Canada

This project reinvests in the study of migration to and from rural Canada through a set of facilitated workshops. Specifically, this project brought together researchers, scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners across the country to explore topics of population movement, mobility, and migration to and from rural places. 

Beyond fostering dialogue, networks, and knowledge-exchange, the purpose of this project was to articulate a rural policy design for mobility, migration and resettlement, which requires thinking about the context, values and audience that do, should, and could inform how we think about and make policy for immigration in Canada. 

Project Goal: to capture, understand, and facilitate conversations about population movements more generally, and both domestic and international dimensions of migration and resettlement, to and from rural and smaller places across Canada. 

Project Objective: to examine and understand how expanding immigration and refugee resettlement in rural places could act as a pathway to: 

1. Revitalize rural communities; 
2. Provide newcomers with more diverse options for settlement; and 
3. Grow Canada’s immigration program (within a global context of rising human displacement).

The image below shows us how immigrants are distributed across the country, by province. The province with the highest number of newcomers is Ontario, followed by British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec. The image here shows us how immigrants are distributed across the country, by province. While the majority of immigrants continue to settle in Canada’s 3 biggest cities, the share of immigrants settling in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver has started to decline, “falling from approximately 73-75% in the 1990s and early 2000s, to 56% in 2016 to 53.4% in 2021” (Haugen et al. 2024). Increasingly, newcomers are settling in smaller communities. Immigration in BC and Alberta is further explored below, as workshops were conducted in these provinces.

Of all immigrants in Canada, the percentage that live in each province.

The percentage of immigrants living in the same place they landed after five years. Total = those who remained in the province. Rural = those who remained in a rural part of the province.

The percentage of immigrants living in the same place they landed after five years.

Retention rates of immigrants outside of Canada’s largest cities give us some insight on where immigrants are settling, and if they are staying in rural and smaller places. The British Columbia data demonstrates that while immigrants are more likely to stay in bigger centres overall, this varies depending on the year, and overall, retention is still quite high in rural BC.

The Alberta data similarly demonstrates that while immigrants are more likely to stay in bigger centres overall, this varies depending on the year, and overall, retention is still over 50% in rural Alberta as well.

The percentage of immigrants living in the same place they landed after five years.

Statistics Canada. Table 43-10-0022-01 Mobility of immigrant taxfilers by census metropolitan areas and tax year. Link: https://doi.org/10.25318/4310002201-eng

Data includes immigrant taxfilers 15 years of age and older. Immigrant taxfilers residing out of Canada are excluded.

• Economic immigrant includes i) Worker programs, ii) Business programs, and iii) Provincial and territorial nominee.
• Immigrant sponsored by family includes i) Sponsored by spouse or partner/parent or grandparent/child, ii) Sponsored intercountry adopted child, iii) Public policy or humanitarian compassionate case sponsored family, and iv) Immigrant sponsored by family, not included elsewhere.
• Refugee includes i) Protected person in Canada or dependent abroad and ii) Resettled refugee.

Retention rate represents the extent to which immigrants remained in the place they originally intended to immigrate to in Canada, which aids understanding settlement and mobility patterns of immigrants.

Retention rate is calculated as the percentage of immigrant taxfilers who filed taxes in the same geographical area they intended to live (as indicated in their application for permanent residence). For example, five-year retention rate for the 2021 tax year is the percentage of immigrants admitted in 2016 who filed their 2021 taxes in the same province, region, or city/town that they indicated as their intended destination. The 2020 five-year retention rate is based on the cohort admitted in 2015, and so on.

In this dataset, rural is defined as any parts of a province outside the census metropolitan areas (CMAs) listed below.

• British Columbia: Kelowna, Abbotsford-Mission, Vancouver, Victoria.
• Alberta: Lethbridge, Calgary, Edmonton.
• Saskatchewan: Regina, Saskatoon.
• Manitoba: Winnipeg.
• Ontario: Ottawa-Gatineau (ON part), Kingston, Peterborough, Belleville, Oshawa, Toronto, Guelph, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, London, Barrie, Brantford, Hamilton, St. Catherines-Niagara, Windsor, Thunder Bay, Greater Sudbury.
• Québec: Saguenay, Trois-Rivières, Québec, Sherbrooke, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau (QC part).
• Prince Edward Island: All areas classified as rural.
• Newfoundland and Labrador: St. John’s.
• Nova Scotia: Halifax.
• New Brunswick: Moncton, Saint John.