Paul Tuns:
On Sept. 25, Statistics Canada reported data that showed the country’s official fertility rate is 1.25 children per woman, the lowest figure Canada has ever recorded, down from its previous low of 1.26 children in 2023.
The figures for 2024, the latest year for which data is available, provide data for births and stillbirths. In total numbers, there were 368,928 babies born in Canada in 2024. In 2022, the latest year for which there are abortion statistics, there were 97,211 aborted babies.
Demographers reckon that the replacement fertility rate – the number of children that each woman of child-bearing age must have in her lifetime for the population to hold steady – is 2.1.
At 1.25, Canada is almost a full child below replacement level and near the bottom of the fertility rate table. Demographers consider a fertility rate below 1.3 to be “ultra-low” and there are only nine members of the dubious club in the western world: South Korea (0.75), Singapore (0.97), Spain (1.12), Japan (1.15), Italy (1.18), Finland (1.25), Luxembourg (1.25), Canada (1.25) and Switzerland (1.26). Red China’s fertility rate is 1.0 and the country, which does not attract immigrants, has experienced total population decline.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a club of large economies, has seen its collective fertility rate more than halved since 1960, falling from 3.3. children per woman to 1.5 in 2024.
In Canada, British Columbia has the lowest fertility rate at 1.02, followed by Nova Scotia at 1.08 and Prince Edward Island at 1.10, numbers near the disastrously low levels in China and Japan. Ontario hovers around the national average at 1.21 children and Quebec is above the national average at 1.34. Nunavut leads among provinces and territories at 2.34 followed by Saskatchewan at 1.58 and 1.50 in Manitoba.
Canada’s fertility rate has been falling steadily since it hit its high in 1959 (3.94) but has plummeted in the past decade. Canada has been below replacement level since 1972, but hovered around 1.6 between the early 1980s until the great recession of 2008, after which is began a precipitous decline.
Campaign Life Coalition National News reported “For the past decade, the Trudeau government has relentlessly pushed and financed abortion and contraception, and the result is showing up in the latest population data from Statistics Canada.” The data, CLC said, “signals a disappearing Canada—or one that relies on massive immigration to shore up the labour and tax base to pay for its old-age obligations and health costs.”
A report from the Royal Bank of Canada on the “grey tsunami” released the same week as the Statistics Canada numbers, said that people over the age of 55 make up 21 per cent of Canada’s workforce, and with the last boomers retiring by 2030, Canada will likely face labour shortages in the near future, with fewer workers supporting a tax base responsible for more old-age pensions and aging healthcare costs. B.C. and Atlantic Canada, which have the lowest fertility rates, have the highest percentage of older workers approaching retirement. RBC economist Cynthia Leach said in the report that “Remaining boomers will reach age 65 by 2030, bringing the largest retirement wave yet.” The RBC report said that higher immigrations levels are necessary to pay for that retirement wave.
Peter Copeland, deputy director for domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank, told the Catholic Register that “over- reliance on immigration has caused a neglect of our domestic fertility challenges.” He said, “We don’t really recognize family as a public good and our taxation benefits and child-care systems are built on this highly individualistic model that prioritizes dual earners.”
CLC said, “A nation on the verge of population decline literally cannot afford to kill even one unborn baby, let alone 100,000 annually.”
The day before the Statistics Canada report, the federal government announced it was giving $13 million to various groups to promote abortion. CLC national president Jeff Gunnarson said, “Instead of pouring millions into the destruction of future Canadians, this money should be used to help families thrive and to encourage married couples to welcome more children.” He said “Carney is not just fiddling while our nation collapses demographically — he is pouring gasoline on the fire by funding those who accelerate the decline. It is utter madness.”
In 2024, Statistics Canada reported on the fertility rate over the previous century and stated that the “baby bust” of the 1960s and early 1970s came as birth control and abortion became easily accessible in Canada.
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