It took just two years and two months to add one million more people to the national population, which stood at 37,067,011 as of April 1.
OTTAWA – Canada’s population has topped 37 million, according to new data released Thursday morning by Statistics Canada, and is growing faster than it ever has before
It took just two years and two months to add one million more people to the national population, which stood at 37,067,011 as of April 1, reported CBC News.
That’s the shortest period on record for an increase of such magnitude.
By comparison, it took 17 years — from 1867 to 1884 — for Canada to add its first post-Confederation million, growing from 3.46 million to 4.48 million people.
Then it took 20 more years to add the next million.
Canada’s population didn’t hit double-digit millions until 1929.
By the end of the Second World War in 1945, the country was home to just 12 million people.
The Centennial year, 1967, was when the population surpassed 20 million.
In its first 50 years as an independent country, Canada added 6.1 million people. Then 14 million more over the next half-century. And now an additional 17 million people over the past 51 years.
Canada’s recent growth has everything to do with immigration.
In the first quarter of this year alone, new migrants and non-permanent residents accounted for 85 per cent of the population increase — 88,120 out of the 103,157 additions. Which is all the more striking, given that Canada logged 93,944 births and a record number of deaths — 78,907 — in the first three months of 2018.
