Canada Population

Canada has one of the highest immigration rates of any wealthy country, and in recent years population growth driven by newcomers has been among the fastest in the developed world. With domestic fertility well below replacement, that inflow is the entire story of the country's growth and the reason it stays comparatively young. The scale of recent arrivals has made immigration levels a sharp political debate over housing and services.

Canada is the world's 38th most populous country, home to about 40.3 million people in 2026. A country of Other, its trajectory to 2100 is governed by how births, deaths and migration play out. It packs in roughly 4 people per square kilometre.

The defining marker in Canada's future is its peak, expected around 2100 at about 53.5 million. After that the population eases back toward 53.5 million by 2100, having passed through 45.5 million at mid-century. It is projected to pass the 50 million mark around 2078.

The median age is set to climb from about 40 today to roughly 47 by 2100, even as life expectancy improves from about 83 years. That ageing slowly changes everything from the size of the workforce to the cost of care and pensions.

Fertility sits at about 1.34 births per woman, below the replacement level of roughly 2.1, so without migration the population would eventually shrink. Net inward migration adds to the population each year and partly offsets the low birth rate.

These figures follow the UN's medium variant, the most widely cited scenario. The low and high variants, driven mainly by differing fertility assumptions, fan out into a wide range by 2100, so treat each number as a central estimate rather than a precise forecast.