It wasn’t just a pandemic blip—more Canadians are leaving the country for good. Statistics Canada (StatCan) data show emigration, when citizens or permanent residents move abroad, hit a new record in 2025. More than half of the emigration is driven by workers aged 25 to 49, while a rapidly growing share of seniors joining them suggests it may be more about quality of life than job opportunities.
Canadian Emigration Soars, Outflows Hit A New Record
Canadian Emigration: Citizens and Permanent Residents Moving Abroad.
Source: StatCan; Better Dwelling.
Canadian emigration has been climbing for years. StatCan’s annual estimates, measured July 1st of each year, shows 120,016 emigrants left Canada in 2025. This represents a 3.0% increase from a year earlier, marking the fourth consecutive year of growth. The volume has nearly doubled in the past decade, reaching a level likely to outpace population growth this year.
The outflows are often attributed to the pandemic, but the data shows a clear structural shift in 2017. Emigration surged 76.7% in 2017, jumping from 67,893 in 2016 to 119,964 people—a record not surpassed until 2025.
Emigration didn’t spike due to the pandemic or recent intensification of the housing crisis. It began years earlier and continues to worsen, with few signs of slowing. On its own, that would be a troubling sign—but a closer look at who is leaving makes this a problem we can’t ignore.
Prime-Aged Canadians Are Leaving In Record Volumes
Canadian Emigration: Citizens and Permanent Residents Moving Abroad, Aged 25 to 49.
Source: StatCan; Better Dwelling.
Workers aged 25 to 49 now account for more than half of Canada’s rising emigration. In 2025, 64,734 people in this age group left, up 3.0% from a year earlier and the largest volume on record. Last year marked the fourth consecutive year of growth, nearly doubling the count over the past decade.
This cohort accounted for 53.9% of total emigration last year, the largest share since 2012. Instead of stabilizing post-Great Recession, losses among core-aged workers accelerated to once again hit recession-like volumes.
Losing these workers is also incredibly problematic. These are mid-career to peak-earnings workers, often in early-family formation years. They aren’t young adults testing mobility or chasing short-term opportunities, but households making deliberate, long-term relocations. Losses at this stage weaken the labour supply, erode income and municipal tax bases, and thin the domestic talent pool. The most mobile workers also tend to be the most skilled, having the widest range of opportunities.
At least Canada is holding onto its seniors, right? About that…
Seniors Represent Growing Share of People Leaving Canada For Good
Canadian Emigrants: Aged 55+ As Share of Total.
Source: StatCan; Better Dwelling.
The structural break in emigration shows up here as well. Canadians aged 55 and older represent a growing share of permanent departures. The data shows 16,609 seniors emigrated in 2025, up 3.0% from a year earlier, and 80.5% higher than a decade prior.
Since 2002, the earliest age breakdown available, seniors’ share of total emigration climbed 8.7% to 13.8% in 2025. What was once a relatively small share now represents nearly one in seven permanently leaving Canada.
Senior emigration growth is an unexpected trend. Universal healthcare in your golden years is often one of the biggest perks of retiring in Canada. Most seniors own their own homes and aren’t in the job market, meaning they’re distanced from the economic cycles impacting young adults. That makes their rising departure rate harder to dismiss—and points to mounting cost pressures and growing tax sensitivity.
There’s also the housing trap. Unlocking retirement wealth usually means selling and downsizing, and finding more affordable digs further from the city centre. However, home prices are currently elevated hours outside of major metros, where access to healthcare is harder to access. As downsizing delivers less value, moving abroad becomes a more rational option. That appears to be a choice that seniors and core-aged workers are increasingly making.
As a professional, it’s tough to ignore the growing trend of people leaving Canada. It’s not just about job opportunities anymore, quality of life matters too.
As a professional in my mid-30s, I’ve been considering leaving Canada for a while now. The economy just doesn’t seem to be improving and it’s hard to see a future here.
I’ve always enjoyed life in Canada and don’t understand why so many are leaving. We have great healthcare and a good quality of life here.
I’m glad you do. Is it fair to assume you’re just finishing up the back half of your career?
Our healthcare system is crumbling. Eight to 100 hour wait times in emergency rooms, 3 months to 2-year wait times for a specialist or surgery. Being put on a stretcher in a busy hallway of a hospital instead of getting a proper bed and hospital room.
Can’t say I’m surprised by this news. The economy is tough, but I’m still optimistic about my own business and the Canadian market.
Really? I mean, I’m fine but be real. It’s going to be pretty depressing if it’s just us old guys around.
No brainer. Canadians can buy new luxury USA homes for less than 400K.
See youtube, zillow, redfin and landsearch etc.
As it turns out many Cdns. are selling their US properties because people don’t want to live in Trump’s America. So yeah, I better you can pick up a pretty good bargain right now.
Got your elbows up Sharon? Who are you going to hate when Trump is out of office in a year and a half?
Are you siding with a pedo who threatened to annex Canada? There’s only one way to spell bootlicker.
It is a simple fact Robert. There is no need to be unpleasant.
Don’t underestimate the seniors that are cashing out to go back to the countries they immigrated from. If they were homeowners in Toronto for example, and they paid their house off, they have a substantial sum of money if they sell in many cases. If rents are high and downsizing is not possible due to (trade-down) margin shrink…it makes sense to go back to your home country….especially if it was democratic and had health care as well. Plus, people are trading in FL for places that you can’t drive to or flights are cheap so you have to make a choice…which is why places like Spain aren’t taking “retirement tourists” anymore!
I’ll be joining the exodus later this year. It physically hurts me to see Canada being driven off the economic cliff. It took 150 years to build this country, and 10 years to destroy it. Uncontrolled immigration from all the wrong countries, government refusal to develop resources, undue privileges given to the First Nations, two-tier policing as bad as in the UK, self-imploding healthcare, erosion of personal freedom – have I missed anything? Oh, and it has become an antisemitic sh!thole, too. I won’t even miss it.
It wasn’t just 10 years. This started with Harper.
Oh Pat lol, I am so ignorant please explain how it started with Harper….this should be good.
It is the right-wing corrupt Premiers like Ford and Smith who are destroying public health care.
Agreed.
Kathleen Wynne has done more damage to Ontarios health care than Doug Ford. Liberals seem to ignore that fact.
Over population is stressing our limited health care system, brought on by the liberals, again.
Under Harper we were doing really well, our dollar was higher than the US dollar. Healthcare wasn’t much better shape and crime was much lower. Sorry if you don’t like the facts.
Who was doing really well? You were? It’s almost like you think you’re speaking speaking for all Canadians.
Do you really think I left Canada 15 years ago so I could make this post today? lol.
Harper cut all kinds of services. That had a direct effect on me and I was able to save far more money (rather than none) by living overseas and not facing the ridiculous cost of living in Canada, which had already started then. Maybe you’ve only noticed it when your partisan least favourite came into power, but some of us noticed far before.
Harper didn’t have to deal with a deranged American president who is actively trying to destroy the Canadian economy.
I left Canada to work abroad in 2010 and returned in 2022. Since being back, all I’ve experienced is bleeding savings while working full time. So now my family and I are taking another job overseas so we can get back to saving instead of bleeding. It’s a shame but it’s the only economical thing that makes sense. The cost of living has gotten too high.
So I just moved out of the country 15 years ago so I could come on here and make up lies about Harper. lol. Ridiculous take.
Many services were slashed under Harper and that’s what drove me out. But sure, never admit the Conservatives can also suck.
You can’t hold the Harper government responsible for your own personal issues. The middle class in Canada was the best in the world under his term. Just because you had a negative situation, doesn’t mean the country has the same experience.
Ah, so consider the inverse. Just because Harper was good for some doesn’t mean he was good for everyone. He was also myopic with oil and gas, as Conservatives always are.
A percentage of retirees leaving Canada will be immigrants returning to their home country for their retirement years. For some, it would have been their long term plan.
Sharon, yes a percentage will be that. However, not the majority. Wages in Canada since 2014 have done absolutely nothing, real gdp per capita is down 40+%. So that pension you worked 20y to get is now worth about 50% of what it was.
Add to that the continued support of a dismal mess in Ottawa, who despite changing the head man, cant seem to stop the bleeding?
Anyone with an ability to leave is and should be leaving. Canada no longer offers anything unless you are already very rich, or work for the Liberals in Ottawa.
It must be nice to be so rich that you can afford to leave the country, lose your OAS and your health card and still manage to afford to pay rent and have health care.
Employers cover that. Imagine!
You are not employed when you are a retired senior. It is crazy to leave a country where you have universal health care to go to one where you will go bankrupt in no time if you get sick.
Not every country has healthcare as pricey as the US does. And working people often (usually?) get healthcare coverage as part of their benefits. If people move to countries where the cost of living is low, or to tax-free countries, they can sock away more dough, too.
You dont lose your OAS. Most countries have a pension treaty with Canada so you keep getting it. Health care is often free in many of these places or very inexpensive. You are missing the point. If I own my house outright, I get OAS, CPP and a pension of 30% of my best 5y pay, I might bring in 3000 – 4000 per month.
My utilities, property taxes, insurance, gas, and so on will eat that up in no time. Then I have to eat ….
We moved from Vancouver to Bellevue 12 years ago to raise our kids. What an improvement in income and housing costs! It’s amazing how many smart Canadian professionals we meet that work at Amazon and Microsoft down here. We had thought of retiring in Vancouver but the health care situation sounds scary 🙁
Nah, if you ask Emily Johnson health care is amazing here lol. Funny there is such disparity between thoughts, one of them has to be wrong.
This is really sad 😢 I grew up in Canada before we moved to the US and are now scared to move back because of Canadian healthcare! What happened in the last decade?!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-emergency-room-wait-times-9.7060368
Health care delivery is a provincial responsibility so what one would experience in Alberta would be different than in Quebec or Ontario.
In Ontario, the two main issues are access to primary care providers and ER wait times. The province is promising that everyone will have a primary care team or doctor by 2029. That’s a maybe to my way of thinking but access to primary care will reduce ER use. In my family’s experience, having needed a number of surgeries in the last couple of years, care was timely and excellent.
AB separation or a bunch more from AB will be leaving as well. No one with a brain wants to stay in a globalist new world order dystopia SMH.
It is very unlikely that AB will separate from Canada. That story is driven by a small but loud number of anti government folks that don’t represent the majority of Albertans. Premier Smith floated the idea of leaving CPP/OAS which was overwhelming rejected by Albertans. Joining Donald Trump’s America? Not likely.
Look since this current govt in ottawa was elected, pretty much anyone who was good in the energy field has already left. Not just people, but companies, capital, technology. Canada was once a world leader in oil and gas, with people coming here to buy our tech for drilling, processing, and green technologies. The Carney / Trudeau govt destroyed that. The problem is their clear focus on making Canada into a profit centre for big banks and developers has killed off pretty much any other industry in Canada too. If it wasnt for the Oil Sands, Fertilizer, Gold and other metals, we wouldnt even have a 25c dollar.
This is why Carney’s dim witted ‘major projects’ thing is a fail. The people with the money dont want to invest in a guy to keeps piling on industrial carbon taxes, and has a caucus full of people who think energy is bad. There are many many other places to invest.
Do you have an evidence to back up your claim that the oil patch is losing people, companies, capital and technology?
Carney’s major project initiative is a few months old. How long do major projects take to get off the ground? A lot long than a few months.
Sharon S said it. I don’t know what echo chamber you guys hang out in every day to be so confident that Alberta will separate. You don’t have the numbers to support it, and you don’t have the Indigenous on board. The whole plan is dead in the water, you guys just don’t realize it yet.
We’ve had many friends and family have this kind of experience in BC 🙁 some have stayed with us in Bellevue when coming to see specialists in Washington:
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/bc-worst-province-specialist-doctor-access
A lot of this Canada-specific data starts to sour in 2015 – 2017….
What happened in this country in 2015 that may have led to so many metrics–from GDP per capita (compared to other G8 nations) to emigration–to turn down so sharply and stay down?
How so? If those who can afford to buy are all leaving, who will buy all these houses? The liberals have clung to this false narrative that ‘supply’ was the problem when it is clearly the cost or price. So now we will have thousands of empty places, that no one can afford, built with tax dollars, in addition to all the bad mortgages insured with tax dollars?
….and that’s great news for the housing and rental markets…..!!!!
Look, the last 10years has been the equivalent of the Great Depression on Canadian’s standard of living. A 40+% drop in Real GDP is more than material, it has effectively turned Canada into a feudal society.
Once housing collapses completely, and all those McMillionaires are gone in the GTA and GVR, it will become clear. The only areas where wages kept up with inflation are real estate, financial services and govt. With those now facing mass layoffs, this will be a serious problem.
People are leaving because without a decent chance at being anything but poor, why would you stay here? Consider, Toronto real estate is already down 20% from the peak, and the fall is accelerating. So when it drops another 40, 50%, and only those who have no mortgage or LOC are clear of the disaster we will see whats left is a desolate wasteland.