Population of Toronto (Including Census Counts)

[Memph]

The trend of population loss in "mature" neighbourhoods, both in the cities, and in built out suburbs, appears to have been not limited to Toronto. Calgary and Edmonton had a similarly pronounced trend as well. However, this has been much less pronounced in Vancouver. Winnipeg, Montreal and Quebec City were somewhere in between. In Halifax, Ottawa, Hamilton, KW, London and most small cities, these built out neighbourhoods actually gained population. Some built out neighbourhoods in outer Toronto suburbs like Brampton, Oshawa and Milton appear to have "filled up" as well.

 

[Irishmonk]

I wonder if in the not to distant future, digital surveillance and big tech data will nail down exactly how many people there are in the country and where each individual lives. (There's no question it's getting increasingly difficult to live off the grid). I suspect all that data is already up in "the cloud", but there hasn't been any documented co-operation between big tech and the government to establish and publish these numbers. At some point the current method of going door to door to acquire census info is going to seem pretty quaint.

 

[Lennox970]

I wonder if in the not to distant future, digital surveillance and big tech data will nail down exactly how many people there are in the country and where each individual lives. (There's no question it's getting increasingly difficult to live off the grid). I suspect all that data is already up in "the cloud", but there hasn't been any documented co-operation between big tech and the government to establish and publish these numbers. At some point the current method of going door to door to acquire census info is going to seem pretty quaint.

That's a really good point. I reckon there is enough information out there: identity, location, salary, occupation, demographic, education, etc that could reasonably be put together to form a reasonably accurate picture of any particular locality.

 

[Northern Light]

I wonder if in the not to distant future, digital surveillance and big tech data will nail down exactly how many people there are in the country and where each individual lives. (There's no question it's getting increasingly difficult to live off the grid). I suspect all that data is already up in "the cloud", but there hasn't been any documented co-operation between big tech and the government to establish and publish these numbers. At some point the current method of going door to door to acquire census info is going to seem pretty quaint.

Precise tracking down to the level of individual in a specific residence is moderately challenging; but there are plenty of ways to get a fairly accurate picture of population.

1) Legitimate employment generally entails the use of your SIN number by your employer; that data is available subject to legislation concerning privacy. It would frankly make much sense to me if this data were used to determine employment/unemployment rather than 'surveys', which seem archaic by comparison.

2) The number of legal residential units is a known commodity, occupancy rates, however, require a determining factor of some kind. There has been discussion
of using power consumption levels; though, for units in multi-unit buildings this could be problematic in that units will generally be heated/air conditioned whether occupied or not, and even vacant units may have lights left on etc.

3) If water usage were universally submetred this would probably be an extremely good proxy, since vacant units are unlikely to have the taps left open.
There would be some margin of error since per capita water consumption will vary, but on an aggregate level I would expect it to be highly accurate.

 

[Northern Light]

Article in the Globe with the new immigration targets from the Federal government, as well as the final tally for last year.

Canada aims to welcome 432,000 immigrants in 2022 as part of three-year plan to fill labour gaps

Ottawa says increased immigration essential with five million Canadians set to retire by the end of this decade and as newcomers accounting for 100 per cent of labour-force growth

www.theglobeandmail.com

(paywalled at time of posting)

Immigration Plan:

2022: 431, 645

2023: 447,000

2024: 451,000

Assuming we peg the existing population at 38,000,000 we're looking annualized growth in the range of 1.14%

****

Last year's growth ended up at 405,000

 

[lenaitch]

Privacy issues aside (and they are not minor), and reflecting on questions in both the long and short forms, I'm wondering how useful such high-level data would be. Utilities consumption is only of limited value, particularly with secondary suites which often aren't separately metered, and if someone works for an employer with distributed sites, SIN would likely be also limited.

 

[jamincan]

Here's the thing.

If you look at what Stats Can is saying above, its saying this is an under count, they know it, and they'll correct it next September.

If you take the national under count, on its face, its about 1.2M.

If you simply pro-rate that difference based on where numerical growth is being recorded, I think you see Toronto up by over 200,000

You can look at the 2016 Census coverage report to get a sense of how it varied across the country. There are actually significant differences between various cities, so comparisons between cities aren't necessarily meaningful on their own. It's my understanding that the trends tend to be more consistent in time (ie. if a city has higher undercoverage in one census, it likely will continue to), but there are reasons to believe that this census might show irregularities compared to previous ones.

Coverage Technical Report, Census of Population, 2016

www12.statcan.gc.ca

 

[Jonny5]

Precise tracking down to the level of individual in a specific residence is moderately challenging; but there are plenty of ways to get a fairly accurate picture of population.

1) Legitimate employment generally entails the use of your SIN number by your employer; that data is available subject to legislation concerning privacy. It would frankly make much sense to me if this data were used to determine employment/unemployment rather than 'surveys', which seem archaic by comparison.

I had to do one of those surveys at a job in the past (back in about 2007). I think for most big employers it was largely automated even then as long as you outsourced payroll to something like ADP, but it was the smaller firms like where I worked that were really targeted to get accurate data because they still either did payroll totally manually, or through some inexpensive online service which would do little more than arrange the disbursement of your cash to the employee bank accounts.

The real meat of the survey I noticed though was about part-time and wage workers. It closely tracked the increases and decreases in average hours worked by employee. This had no applicability to our office of seven salaried employees, but I could see it matter to a small businesses like a restaurant where there's variability in how much staff work by week, or even if they work at all (the so-called "zero-hours contracts" which are rare here, but do happen.) That has some spillover effects to other areas like EI payments where eligibility is in part determined by your local unemployment rate, so the idea of the survey is to very quickly capture layoffs and significant reductions of working hours happening in specific locations.

 

[toaster29]

I created a map of all 338 federal ridings that shows how they compare with federal and provincial population averages.

There are five ridings – four in Alberta, as well as Brampton West – that have larger populations than PEI, which has four ridings.

Meanwhile, the use of federal ridings based on 2011 census counts has created huge disparities in ward populations.

Wards and ridings: not quite representation by population

With the release of the 2021 Census population data, the disparities within federal ridings and City of Toronto wards become quite stark

seanmarshall.ca

Nice map, but your definition of Northern Ontario ridings provincially is incorrect. You say "In Ontario, the provincial government uses the same boundaries for its provincial electoral districts, with the exception of Northern Ontario, where two additional seats help to compensate for the area’s vast and remote regions, where local MPPs may have to travel hours by car, train, or plane to meet constituents"

This makes it sound like the adding of the 2 new Northern Ridings changed everything, but they've been different for a long time. There's also Temiskaming-Cochrane (which is only provincial), which has existed long before they wanted to introduce the 2 northern ridings. So Provincially Ontario actually has +3 ridings (not 2).

 

[dahusbandofbath]

In case anyone hadn't seen it, Statcan's 2023 population estimates are out. In 2023, the city of Toronto's population was estimated to be 3,110,984 (link).

 

[Dimensional]

On the topic of population, very interesting to see Mississauga buck the downward trend it has seen in population decline and Brampton on the heel of surpassing Mississauga in the upcoming year(s).

Geography	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
	Persons
Mississauga (CY), Ontario (map)	761,192	758,665	747,057	745,390	756,453

Brampton (CY), Ontario (map)	673,296	688,154	687,462	700,846	744,041

 

[Jaye101]

Is there anyway to get population numbers for the former 6? It would be interesting to see if any of the big 3 crossed the 1 million mark.

 

[stanko]

Unfortunately not. Not from Statcan at least

 

[dahusbandofbath]

Statcan: Population estimates, July 1, by census subdivision, 2021 boundaries
2019 - 2023

Toronto (C), Ontario (map)	2,939,364	2,952,366	2,917,666	2,985,228	3,110,984

 

[Northern Light]

There are several threads where this could be placed, but I'll go with this one.

@AshNavabi has an excellent Front Page Story looking at population growth in Toronto, both proper and the CMA, and comparing it to housing starts and completions and placing all that in a broader North American context.

Well worth a read!

How Toronto Is Responding as the Fastest Growing City in North America | UrbanToronto

That Toronto is growing is not surprising to anyone; that it is the fastest growing city on the continent does put our growth in a new light. So let’s illuminate how the City is changing with respect to construction, infrastructure, and policy.

urbantoronto.ca