The pandemic kicked off a Great Migration for Canadians, who fled expensive provinces for affordable housing. That boom is ending for Atlantic Canada, but continues in Alberta according to a new analysis from BMO Capital Markets. They found the two biggest losers are BC and Ontario, where people continue to flee the sky-high cost of living. Good news for Alberta, but not for Atlantic Canada, BC, or Ontario. It’s going to be hard to justify lofty real estate valuations in those provinces, as locals flee and immigration slows.
Net Interprovincial Migration
Net interprovincial migration is the balance of Canadians that move to a province. A positive balance is a net inflow—fewer residents left than arrived from other provinces. A negative balance is an outflow, and the province is losing more people than it can attract. This is an important, but often misunderstood, sentiment metric for a quality of life.
Yes, a sentiment metric. It provides insight into the outlook of a provincial economy based on domestic experience. These are people who make the difficult decision to leave their province based on experience within the country. They understand the local economy and don’t see a future there. Failing to retain talent, especially core aged workers, is a disastrous setup for an economy.
Most policymakers dismiss the issue since the population can still grow based on immigration. Ontario comes to mind, home to the largest negative outflows but big immigration-based growth. It’s arrogant to think that high-skilled immigrants won’t see the same opportunity (or lack of), and follow a similar migration. By relying solely on immigration, an economy is amplifying its vulnerability to sudden economic shock.
Canadians No Longer Flocking To Atlantic Canada As Value Erodes
When the pandemic kicked off and Canadians went remote, people flocked to Atlantic Canada. That boom helped send real estate prices soaring, especially in Halifax—where home prices were amongst the fastest rising in the country. And just like that, the affordable housing people were seeking disappeared along with the inflows of people into Eastern Canada.
“Net interprovincial migration to Atlantic Canada, a region that has been booming since the pandemic, is fizzling out,” explains Robert Kavic, senior economist at BMO.
The bank’s data shows Atlantic Canada’s seasonally adjusted annualized net migration peaked at an inflow of more than 25k people. Since then, that’s spiraled down to 0 in the most recent data release.
“For a region that has seen growth driven well above recent norms by torrid population flows (both interprovincial and international), this is a development that could take some serious heat out of growth and housing next year,” explains Kavcic.
Canadians Still Moving To Alberta, East Coast Lost Its Appeal
Source: BMO Capital Markets.
Alberta Is Still Attracting A Near Record Number of Canadians
The Great Migration that kicked off with the pandemic is far from over. Alberta saw a sudden inflow due to affordable housing and something Atlantic Canada doesn’t have—jobs. The province is still poaching talent from across the country at a near-record rate.
At it’s peak, Alberta saw a net inflow of just over 50k people. A trend that began right after Atlantic Canada’s slowdown, and Kavcic explains is still going strong. His analysis shows a near-record net inflow of 50k people in the latest quarter.
“Where are people leaving? B.C. and Ontario. Or put another way…they’re leaving expensive housing and congestion,” explains the bank.
Home prices in the two provinces have begun to show signs of firming, but it’s unclear if this rally has legs. Canada plans to intentionally slow its population growth starting next year, and the current plan is to continue this into 2026. With outflows still happening at a fast rate, the primary factor driving prices in those provinces would be credit.
Major labor shortage folks
Need to increase immigration to fix this
I agree. As a business owner, it’s simple to me – we need more people.
Gotta love those hiring bonuses you get from the Indian immigration consultants. My local Tim Hortons owners was bragging about getting $17,000 each for each manager he hired. But why does one store need 6 managers?
Mega labour shortage on Ellesmere Island. The migrants need to be shipped up there to create some much-needed diversity in the far north.
Canada is depopulating, starting with 5 millon student and work visas expiring the end of 2025.
Good. Maybe we can replace them with Ukrainian and Russian widows and their children. Real refugees with real need not fake refugees from India and other Asian democracies taking advantage of Canada’s stupid and corrupt immigration system.
Yes we need many more fast food workers.
There’s zero chance the numbers for population growth is correct for Toronto. Stores are empty, there’s no one on transit, etc. The only time I’ve seen anyone gathering was the Taylor Swift concert (out of towners), and the Distillery Christmas market.
They’re cooking the books but I have no idea why.
I was in Toronto yesterday and took the TTC to get around. The TTC was packed, all day, every subway and bus ride that I took. Can’t agree with your comment that no one is on transit, it was standing room only.
Disagree all you want, the TTC’s high this year was only 79% of the reported riders in 2019. It may have been packed because of delays, and I’m not sure if they restored full service yet (last I saw was 97% of service restored).
Note that TTC management keeps saying “post-pandemic high” in its stats, but not the actual share. Office vacancies have also never been higher. It also falsely presented the Taylor Swift concert ridership as its daily peak, which is an absurd lie to pretend that’s going to be normal.
Selling in Toronto/Vancouver and moving to Halifax made sense when home prices were half the value. Now it’s a slight discount and higher taxes for access to a smaller job market with worse pay.
If you come to Alberta, please remember that you are an economic refugee, not a missionary.
Please link to the actual BMO source. rather than the homepage. Fact checking your work is impossible when we can’t find the original source.
I think every news company has already explained this a bazillion times. Banks email journalists before they make public commentary. They can’t link to their email and discussion with the bank.
The same economist is literally on their video interviews all the time (along with the Poloz and the Federal Reserve). It’s hilarious when people think they have higher standards than those guys.
I moved from BC to Alberta in 2022 and purchased a home for half the cost of my BC property. Both were the same size. Your article talks about home prices and jobs but neglectes to talk about seniors which moved to cash in on home equity. I know of four such cases from one BC town of only 5000 people.
We did what you did as seniors. We sold our big family home in the Fraser Valley for over 1.7 million in March 2022. Moved to Central Alberta near Red Deer and downsized to $250,000 newer attached home, bought 2 rental condos in downtown Edmonton, 2 rental single family houses in Red Deer, invested $400,000 in 2nd mortgages and gave my son a downpayment to buy a new house in Calgary. Could I have done that in B.C.? Not a chance. I feel like a WW two refugee escaping communism thinking of what I left behind in BC. Anybody who can leave BC should get out while they can because it is not going to get any better in the next 4 years under the NDP and David Eby.
When I see the houses being built and renovated for sale in Toronto I keep asking myself, who is this for? With cost of living sky high and purchasing power decreasing by the day, why would they continue to build such unaffordable homes, and why are places in undesirable areas still so much? Then there is those shoe box condos, who can actually live in those poorly built things? The supply and sales figures are not aligning with the climate.
The city is hemorrhaging industry and people and yet it continues to operate down this path. The only thing I can think of is money laundering. As long as this country allows for anonymous ownership (which does not count towards foreign so long as the shell corp. is listed here) it will continue to be an attractive place to clean money for foreign countries and criminals. It’s not a coincidence that a spike occurred during COVID either. Higher prices just means more dollars cleaned which translates into more property tax for city coffers.
There was an article in the Financial Post back in 2019 that talked about this,
“Since 2008, $28.4 billion worth of housing was acquired in the Toronto region largely through private entities where owners can remain anonymous, according to a report released Thursday by Transparency International Canada
In that period, $9.8 billion of housing was bought by companies through cash purchases, largely bypassing anti-money laundering checks on fund sources and beneficial owners, according to the study, which analyzed more than 1.4 million residential sales dating back to 2008.”
Cartels have rinsed money through real estate in other places so it’s not a foreign concept. Besides, it’s not as if our banks haven’t been dipping into that revenue stream, TD just got fined by the US government for that very thing!