By Canadian Press

Downtowns growing faster than before, but pandemic hampered rate of growth: census

Feb 9, 2022 | 8:09 AM

TORONTO — Statistics Canada says the country’s downtowns are growing faster than before, but the pandemic triggered a slowdown in how many people migrated to city centres.

New census data released by the agency says more than 1.2 million people or 3.5 per cent of Canadians lived in the downtown portion of one of the country’s 41 large urban centres in the spring of 2021. 

StatCan says within these large urban centres, downtowns grew at a faster pace from 2016 to 2021 than during the previous census, which covered 2011 to 2016.

However, it found the pandemic slowed the pace of growth and caused a roughly three per cent, year-over-year drop in the populations of Montreal and Vancouver.

In Toronto, the population grew by just 0.4 per cent between July 2020 and June 2021, which is a drop from the 3.2 per cent annual growth seen between 2016 and 2021.

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Toronto remained the most populous downtown with almost 276,000 people, while Vancouver trailed with just shy of 122,000, Montreal had about 109,000 and Ottawa reported roughly 67,000.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2022.

The Canadian Press