Quebec population expected to decrease over next five years

Quebec’s Institute of Statistics estimates the province’s population will decline by 80, 000 in the next five years. 

The institute says a number of factors are behind the decrease – including recent government efforts to reduce the number of temporary immigrants, projected international migration patterns, and fertility rate trends. It projects the province’s population will stabilize at around 9.2 million in the coming decades. Quebec’s population was close to 9.1 million in 2024.

Carlos Rojas, an immigration advocate and the president of the organization Conseil Migrant, said that the projected drop in population risks pushing out migrants who have already begun to build their lives in the province.  

He said immigrants who leave Quebec and don’t resettle elsewhere in Canada may not have any other places to go. “Either they’re gonna relocate in the country, somewhere else in the country, or they’re gonna leave the country, and we are literally deporting Canadians.”

But despite the expected 0.9 per cent drop in population by 2030, the province’s statistical institute says housing needs are still forecasted to rise, by 0.8 percent. 

“The main reason why we project this decline is really the temporary migrant lowering or reduction in the next couple of years,” said Frédéric Fleury-Payeur, a demographer at the institute.

“The consequences will be mainly observed on the working age population, but not necessarily workers. Because we welcomed a lot of newcomers in the past couple of years, so we have a lot of new people in the working age population,” said Fleury-Payeur. “Not all of them are already in the workforce or are being employed.”

Officials say that the drop will affect primarily international students and asylum seekers who aren’t necessarily integrated into the workforce. 

The Montreal area is expected to be hit hardest by the expected decline, with officials projecting the city’s population to fall by just under five per cent. This marks a sharp reversal to the province’s estimates this time last year, where they predicted Montreal’s population to grow by over three per cent.

In contrast, researchers estimated the Quebec City region’s population would grow by 21 per cent, the most in the province.

While the province is expecting a drop in younger, working-age residents, officials say that housing needs are still expected to rise as the province’s older population grows and requires more support. 

“Since the growth is expected to be very high in the older age population,” said Fleury-Payeur. “That generate a growth in household needs to be much bigger, actually twice as high as the growth in total population in most regions.”

Quebec’s projected population decrease comes a year after the federal government announced a plan to decrease the number of temporary residents to five per cent of the total population by 2027. 

The Quebec government also said in June that it aims to drop the number of temporary foreign workers in the province by just over nine per cent over the next three years.

Moshe Lander, a professor of Economics at Concordia University, said it’s no surprise that temporary residents are expected to make up the bulk of the decline – especially with regulations like Quebec’s language and secularism laws that he said make the province less attractive to newcomers. 

“The government has made an attack on the English universities,” said Lander. “They’ve made it more difficult for people to come into the province. They’ve been selective as to who they view as being acceptable in the province. And the people that are most mobile are going to say, if that’s your approach, then we’re going to go somewhere where we’re appreciated.”

Lander warned a drop of this kind could carry significant economic consequences, in the medium to long-term: “Quebec standard of living is going to continue to fall further and further behind the rest of Canada’s.”

–With files from The Canadian Press