More Than 120,000 People Left Canada Last Year, Marking an Emigration Peak

People are seen at Pearson International Airport in Toronto in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette

More than 120,000 Canadians and permanent residents moved out of the country between September of last year and September of this year, according to data from Statistics Canada.

Similar peaks in the departure of citizens and permanent residents have only been seen twice in Canadian history, in 1968 amid a housing bubble in Canada that saw professionals fleeing to the United States, and in 2017 during a regional real estate bubble that mainly occurred in three provinces.

In terms of comparing quarterly numbers, Statistics Canada listed 41,203 emigrants in the third quarter of 2025, up around 1 percent from the same quarter last year though still approximately 30 percent higher than the average annual rolling emigration outflow prior to the pandemic, according to a report by Better Dwelling.

Past Peaks

The 1968 real estate peak saw rampant land speculation, with a speculation tax eventually introduced in Ontario in 1974 to halt soaring property prices.

This Canadian exodus coincided with a booming U.S. economy and tighter restrictions on Canadians working in the United States under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which went into effect in July 1968.

The 2017 emigration peak also aligned with a real estate peak, with around 80 percent of emigrants in the second quarter of 2017 hailing from B.C., Quebec, and Ontario, according to Better Dwelling.

As real estate prices rose particularly high in those provinces, B.C. and Ontario both put in speculation taxes to try to stem the peak.

Living Abroad

In 2017, the countries with the highest number of those born in Canada living abroad were the United States at 893,491, the UK at 91,545, and Australia at 56,651, according to a 2022 Statistics Canada report.

The year 2024 saw 81,601 people leave Canada, 39,430 of whom were from Ontario, according to a report from the liv.rent platform. B.C., Alberta, and Quebec were the next leading sources of emigrants, with 18 percent of emigrants leaving from B.C. and 13 percent each from Quebec and Alberta.

Alberta was also the only province last year to grow in terms of interprovincial migration, experiencing a surge of more than 30,000 people moving to that province from within Canada.