Ottawa, Feb 10 Canada's population grew at nearly twice the rate of any other G7 country from 2016 to 2021, rising by 5.2 per cent from 2016 to nearly 37 million in 2021, Statistics Canada has said.
Statistics Canada on Wednesday released the first results from the 2021 census, including the number of Canad counted and the population growth, and it will in the coming months publish the full results from the census conducted every five years, Xinhua news agency reported.
According to the results, around 80 per cent of Canada's population growth was due to immigration and 20 per cent to natural increase, which means the natural increase fell from 0.3 to 0.1 per cent, the lowest level on record. Despite the decline, the government agency added that the country is expected to maintain a positive natural increase for the next 50 years.
Statistics Canada said the Covid-19 pandemic not only slowed the arrival of immigrants from other lands and may also have impacted fertility rates.
A recent study suggested that one-fifth of Canadian adults under the age of 50 years wanted to have fewer children than previously planned or delayed having children as a result of the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, fertility in Canada had been decreasing since 2015 and hit a record low of 1.4 children per woman in 2020, according to the government agency.
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