Canadians continue to flee in record volumes, in a trend that’s picking up, not plateauing. Statistics Canada (StatCan) data shows emigration—when citizens or permanent residents move abroad—climbed again in Q1. Canadians are now leaving at the fastest pace in 74 years of records.
Canadians Continue To Flee In Record Volumes
Canadian emigration: Citizens and PRs permanently relocating abroad, Q1.
Source: StatCan; Better Dwelling.
StatCan estimates 30,092 emigrants in Q1 2026, up 0.9% (+276 people) from last year. Don’t let the minor growth rate fool you. This was the fifth straight quarter of annual growth and the highest it’s been in 74 years.
This data is often conflated with Canada’s intentional pullback of non-permanent residents (NPRs), but they’re different issues. The country saw 199,260 NPRs leave in Q1 2026, up 16.5% (+28,230) from last year—the biggest Q1 on record for NPR outflows. NPR departures began climbing even before policymakers decided to throttle intake volumes; the temporary nature of those visas means it shouldn’t surprise.
Over 120,000 Canadians Moved Abroad In The Past 12 Months
Canadian emigration: Rolling 12-month sum of citizens and permanent residents moving abroad with no plans to return.
Source: StatCan; Better Dwelling.
There were 120,916 emigrants in the 12 months ending Q1 2026, up 1.4% (+1,630) from a year prior—and this isn’t a quarterly comparison skew. The rolling 12-month sum has accelerated for three straight years, reaching its highest level on record. Canadians have never left the country at such a rapid pace.
Emigration rising aggressively signals a much deeper problem brewing. One that policymakers fundamentally don’t understand.
Canada Hiding The Problem With Immigration Is Misguided
Policymakers often dismiss emigration data, relying on the view that people are relatively replaceable. The mindset is that losing one Canadian isn’t a problem if we mint two of these human capital tax units. People can be trained, and there’s no short-term problem that money can’t solve. When you’re of the gilt class, it’s hard to understand why everyone isn’t fond of your rule.
The problem is these aren’t recent immigrants leaving. They aren’t facing culture shock or foreign credential hurdles. These aren’t people sold on diploma mill marketing, only to realize they’ve been scammed. These are Canadians, and other countries are offering a more compelling pitch.
The demographic leaving makes this worse. Most countries only want immigrants who are young, talented, and bringing in-demand skills—which is exactly who’s walking out the door. It’s been a problem in the startup sector, where many Canadians feel the need to leave to succeed.
New Canadians might eventually replace them—but that assumes the replacement talent doesn’t notice the same exit signs. Canada attracts top global talent, but if the people who build the opportunities are leaving, the pitch hollows out fast.
Not a problem unique to Canada, it started in Europe first. For some reason Boomers want this country to be more like Europe, failing to recognize they didn’t leave Europe because it was totally great and filled with opportunity.
See that canyon from the 1970s through early 2000s? That’s when I arrived, and it’s really hard to explain to people how much we’ve changed as a country.
Back when I arrived, adults worked at the mall and two full-time workers could afford to buy a modest house. Now I work with young guys making $100k+ per year and they can’t afford to buy anything but a shoebox condo with maintenance fees that rival rents.
It’s not just nostalgia for the past, but there was a real breakdown along the way and I hope people smarter than me know where that happened, and understand how to fix it.
2 more Canadian born professionals here leaving in Q2. Canada has become a debt machine to pay corporations and real estate middle men who have never seen higher profits. Our lives are more than owing money to them. We are out.
Welcome to the club!
Canada’s problem may be “Diversity is a fact, inclusion is a choice, equity is the law,” depending on it is enforced. If the gov’t assumes that under-representation can have only explanation, i.e., racism against the minority, and the solution is to increase minority representation until it is equal to White representation, then Canada is forcing many White Canadians to leave. There can be a variety of explanations for under-representation, but when race becomes the official answer, unqualified minorities are promoted. The other cause is monetization of housing as has happened in Los Angeles
But, didn’t the Booomer families leave Europe hundreds of years ago. Also, many came north from US colonies after 1776. How many recent European immigrants has Canada had? How many of those who are leaving come from families who have been in Canada for more than 100 years.
My family’s been here since before confederation, and an important point worth stressing is most of those families had a head start and absolutely squandered it.
Survival of the fittest. Our families moved West when things got tough, so what’s the big deal if our kids move to another country? Take some accountability, bud. The immigrants didn’t decide we were going to take out so much debt we needed bodies to average down the debt to maintain our credit score.
That our delusional Boomer generation that thinks government money and corruption is free.
Me. We’re leaving next month because of high taxation, high inflation, and corporate fee structures.
2 more Canadian born professionals here leaving in Q2. Canada has become a debt machine to pay corporations and real estate middle men who have never seen higher profits. Our lives are more than owing money to them. We are out.
I don’t see this as a race problem so much as a class problem. Canada doesn’t want young people to succeed, they want indentured servants that make just enough to live but not enough to leave.
If your kid is in the privileged class, you better believe you’d support them moving to wherever their odds of success are highest. It’s embarrassing that the government thinks they should spend a third of their professional salaries to live in a dog crate.
just a cesspoll of rasicm and pure unadultered ignorace here, oh well you won’t change better dwelling commentors……….
f*k off with your bait raging racism suggestions. It’s laughable to even suggest they’re white supremacists, I think I’ve only seen two white people that work at better dwelling.
Go, they’ll come back crying when the realize America isn’t what it seems!
I’ve heard rumors of there being at least one more country on this planet that isn’t america. Does anyone know if it’s true?
Right?! TDS is real.
I know the answer, but I was told to keep it a secret. We don’t want ‘them’ to know about it. LOL
We left Canada a few years ago for Europe. We run into young Canadians all the time, usually just out of post-secondary. They left Canada because they realised their opportunities are so limited there, prices are crazy and the people are becoming uncivilised.
They get job offers thrown at them, here. Homes are affordable in most cities, the weather is delightful and people are so kind.
It’s interesting to see data backup my anecdotal experience.
Not in my experience, as well as the large Cdn expat community in Florida. Better weather, better taxes, cheaper living, excellent health care, great communities and people.
Canada, once a country of opportunity has become an open cesspool ideologically committed to a perverse sense of D.E.I.- which should mean Diversity, Equity and Inclusion but has become to mean Discrimination, Exclusion and Intolerance. Canada has been buggered by a corrupt Liberal Party that has sold our birthrights as Canadians to people who hate Canada and Canadian vlaues and are exploiting Canadian generosity and sense of fairness. As Gaad Saad puts it, we have been destroyed by “suicidal empathy”. We have the lowest rating in the G7, we are the laughing stock of the world and yes, the people who contributed to every facet of creating opportunity and wealth for Canada and getting the (&$@& out of Dodge (read that as getting the *$%# out of Canada! ) Ohhhhhh Canada- you are beze and futue. (look it up)
…are getting the (*%#@%^& out of Canada.
’tis called control demolition…
Yeah I’m another Canadian (born) who is leaving next month because the cost of living is absurd. Canadians live in debt because we owe so much due to unchecked corporate gouging. And everyone had to get rich for nothing in real estate but guess what? No one can afford it now.
We have no plans to come back unless things change. We might even sell the house next year if nothing changes.
Good for you! We should all vote with our feet. I certainly hope to leave once I retire in a few years, if I can get a European country to take me.
And our idiot politicians wonder why Canadians aren’t having kids – it’s the cost of living! No one wants to raise two kids in a crappy Canadian condo, in a suburb an hour commute out of a city to work in, and get to pay $500k-$1 mil for that condo! F’off, Canadian boomers demanding $1.5mil for their outdated single family houses. (And yes I’m a 3rd generation Canadian).
World money moved increasingly towards tech and digital, while Canada sticked to only selling natural resources to big brother, who now doesn’t talk to you. It’s a costly affair to maintain such a huge beautiful country with a limited people. Critical mass is a problem in every problem of Canada and you are inviting only maintainers, not growth hackers.
What about the plethora of immigrants who move to Canada, become “Canadian” with full intentions of making enough money to move “back home” as soon as they are able? This is no small cadre. And they were never Canadian. They were exploiting the benefits of a global clearing house.
I can tell you there have been a lot of people born in western canada who have moved away to run away from the liberals. This includes most of our energy ip and capital, which are now in Houston, Dallas.
Everyone I know who has permanently left Canada in these past few years are born-and-raised Canadians.
Canada made a number of bad policy decisions since 2001. Probably the biggest has been propping up housing values and banks as our primary industry.
Now, as much as having a house is necessary, the astronomical cost of housing in canada goes way beyond what it costs to house people. Finally, 80% of those costs are not in any way related to producing anything – they are taxes, interest, corporate profits. None of these things are productive, they are parasitic.
So when someone says, I refuse to pay 1M for a box like condo in a failing rust belt city like toronto, since I could buy a condo in NYC, la or Miami for that, what is our answer?
Population replacement gearing up.
Those “74-year record emigration” headlines sound scary, but they only work if you ignore that Canada’s population has nearly tripled since the 1950s. The actual rate (percentage) of people leaving is way lower now than it was in the 1960s. On top of that, over 85% of these departures are just temporary residents whose student or work visas expired, not citizens permanently fleeing the country.
Even when looking only at permanent residents, we still welcomed three new permanent residents for every one person who left last year. Canada definitely has real housing and economic issues to solve, but framing the correction of too many temporary visas for the last couple of years as a historic national exodus is starting with a conclusion and ignoring all the details that don’t fit your predefined narrative.
You missed the details its CDNs & permanent residents leaving, 3yrs running more CDNs Emigrating than the year prior, and 1.2 million last year. CDNs, not temp students, not work visas, not returning immigrants. Cdns & permanent residents. Read again.
For those who are leaving, where are you going? Regretfully, my husband and I would like to leave as well. (We are late 50s, and retiring soon.)
Popular are: Portugal, Italy, Greece, some newer south east European countries, Paraguay, Uruguay, some go to Mexico, and Panama, and of course the USA. Each has different aspects. Check out the “capitalist nomad.com for lots of info.