Canada’s Immigration Strategy Encounters A Pregnant Pause

By Mata Press Service

When Rupinder Gill immigrated to Canada, she imagined raising three children, much like the family she had grown up in India.

Today, the Surrey resident has one child and says the rising cost of housing, groceries and childcare has forced her family to reconsider whether they can afford another.

“We always thought we would have a bigger family, but every year the cost of living rises and having another child feels further out of reach,” Gill said.

Her experience reflects a wider demographic shift unfolding among immigrant families across Canada according to a new study published in Population Research and Policy Review.

The study found immigrants continue to have more children than Canadian-born residents, but that difference is rapidly disappearing as newcomers settle into a country marked by expensive housing, delayed parenthood and growing financial uncertainty.

The study found the fertility rate among immigrants fell from 1.68 children per woman in 2001 to 1.42 in 2021.

Over the same period, the rate among Canadian-born women declined from 1.44 to 1.31.

The fertility gap between the two groups narrowed from 0.24 births per woman in 2001 to just 0.11 in 2021.

The findings challenge a long-standing assumption behind Canada’s population strategy: that sustained immigration can offset low birth rates and provide a lasting solution to an aging workforce.

The researchers concluded that immigration remains important for supporting the economy and slowing population decline but cannot create population replacement over the long term.

“Immigration offers a short-term solution to population loss, but does not create population replacement,” the study said.

The report was written by Western University researchers Yue Teng, Rachel Margolis, Yoko Yoshida and Howard Ramos.

They examined long-form census data from 2001, 2006, 2016 and 2021, along with the 2011 National Household Survey. The researchers estimated fertility by linking infants living in census families with their mothers.

Their findings come as Canada enters what Statistics Canada describes as an era of “ultra-low fertility.”

The national fertility rate fell to a record 1.25 children per woman in 2024. A rate below 1.30 is generally considered ultra-low, while roughly 2.1 children per woman are needed to maintain a population without immigration.

The average age of mothers at childbirth also reached a record 31.8 years in 2024, compared with 26.7 years in 1976. Statistics Canada attributed the decline to delayed motherhood, growing childlessness and barriers that prevent some women from having the children they want.

The new study found that immigrants are quickly moving toward the same demographic pattern.

Those who came to Canada after age 15 had a fertility rate of 1.75 in 2021, substantially higher than the Canadian-born rate.

Immigrants who arrived at age 15 or younger had a fertility rate of just 1.25, lower than both adult immigrants and Canadian-born residents.

The researchers said immigrants who grow up in Canada are more likely to adopt Canadian attitudes toward family size, gender roles and the timing of parenthood.

Fertility also varied sharply according to immigration category.

Family-class immigrants recorded the highest rate in 2021, at 1.97 children per woman. Refugees followed at 1.77.

Economic immigrants had a fertility rate of 1.32, close to that of Canadian-born women, while temporary residents recorded the lowest rate of any group at 0.96.

That distinction carries particular weight for Canadian policy because economic migrants make up the largest part of the permanent immigration program.

The researchers said economic immigrants may postpone children while trying to establish careers, find housing and gain financial security. Temporary workers and international students face added uncertainty because their right to remain in Canada is tied to work or study permits.

The study also found below-replacement fertility among immigrant women from all of Canada’s 10 largest source countries in 2021.

Women born in India had a fertility rate of 1.29 after settling in Canada. The rate was 1.37 among women from the Philippines and 0.92 among women from China.

Iranian immigrant women recorded the lowest rate, at 0.75, while Pakistani women had the highest among the 10 groups, at 1.70.

Women from India, the Philippines and China made up the three largest groups of immigrant women of child-bearing age in the 2021 data.

The study found that fertility among women from India and the Philippines was more than 50 per cent lower in Canada than in their countries of birth. Large differences were also recorded among immigrants from Pakistan and Iran.

The findings arrive as Ottawa sharply reduces the flow of new temporary residents and holds permanent immigration below the levels planned earlier in the decade.

Canada’s 2026 to 2028 Immigration Levels Plan sets permanent resident admissions at 380,000 annually. Economic immigration will account for the largest share, reaching 64 per cent of admissions in 2027 and 2028.

The government has also cut its target for new temporary residents from 673,650 in 2025 to 385,000 in 2026. This year’s target includes 230,000 temporary workers and 155,000 international students.

Ottawa says the reductions are intended to ease pressure on housing, health care and other services, while bringing temporary residents below five per cent of the population by the end of 2027.

The policy shift creates a difficult demographic equation, signalled the study.

Canada is reducing immigration in response to strained services and public concern. At the same time, its birth rate is falling, its population is aging and many employers continue to depend on newcomers to fill labour shortages.

The study suggests immigration can buy Canada time, but each generation of newcomers is increasingly shaped by the same conditions that have pushed the country’s birth rate to record lows.