Population, Mid-Year 2019: 37,411,000
Population Density (Population Per Square Kilometer), Mid-Year 2019: 4
Projected Population Mid-Year 2030: 40,834,000
Percentage of Population Under Age 25 Years, Mid-Year 2019: 28%
Percentage of Population 65 Years Or Over, Mid-Year 2019: 18%

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Population Prospects 2019: Data Booklet (ST/ESA/SER.A/424).

Annual Population Growth Rate 2000-2020: 1.0%
Projected Annual Population Growth Rate 2020-2030: 0.7%
Proportion of Urban Population, 2020: 82%
Annual Growth Rate of Urban Population 2000-2020: 1.1%
Projected Annual Growth Rate of Urban Population 2020-2030: 0.9%

Source: United Nations Children’s Fund, The State of the World’s Children 2021: On My Mind – Promoting, protecting and caring for children’s mental health, UNICEF, New York, October 2021.

“Although it has a large land mass, Canada’s population was just over 37.5 million in 2019, up from 36.5 million in 2017 (Statistics Canada, 2019a). The two largest cities are Toronto and Montreal, with 6.3 million and 4.1 million inhabitants, respectively, living in the cities and surrounding areas, and are defined as “census metropolitan areas” (Statistics Canada, 2019b) (see Table 1.1). In contrast, the country’s capital city, Ottawa, and its surrounding area, has a population of 1.4 million. Although Canada has one of the lowest human population densities in the world (approximately 4.0 persons per km2) (Table 1.2), most of the population is concentrated in southern urban centres that are close to the USA border. A relatively small number of Canadians live in the immense rural and more northern regions of the country. Most new immigrants live in Canada’s largest cities and international immigration is the main driver of population growth in cities, accounting for nearly 80% of population growth in 2016/17 (Statistics Canada, 2018a). In 2016, about 6% of the population identified as Indigenous (Statistics Canada, 2018b), though this is an undercount because: some First Nations communities refused to participate in the census; there are some mobile and sometimes poorly housed populations that are missed by the census; and some people may choose not to self-identify as Indigenous in the census (Smylie & Firestone, 2016; Rotondi et al., 2017).”

Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.

Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated Oct. 19, 2022 by Doug McVay, Editor.