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The path looks different depending on where, and can be counterintuitive. That a new coal plant might be build in the later half of the decade doesn't mean investors see carbon emissions as a free for all likes its 2007. Or that reserve ratio driven investments are the concerns of bankers' 'going concern' evaluations (a big driver of oil sands investment pre shale boom).
 
Looks like the CMA is over 1.6 million with record growth, according to Stats Can

Annual demographic estimates, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations: Interactive dashboard

This interactive dashboard allows the user to visualize the factors of population growth and how they have changed over time for census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations. The dashboard shows population, population growth, factors of population growth (natural increase, international...
www150.statcan.gc.ca www150.statcan.gc.ca

1673565876761.png
 
Holy cow, those are some massive numbers. I was expecting high growth, but not that much.
Looks like Canada as a whole had huge numbers, thanks to good old international immigration. I suspect all of the major metros had big numbers.
 
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Here's some numbers for others cities. Everyone seems to have done well, but Calgary definitely crushed it, even beating out Montreal. Last year it had briefly fallen behind Ottawa, but even last year's numbers are showing Calgary has being ahead. Was there a change in boundaries or something? Maybe they added Foothills MD or there was an under count or something? IIRC statscan had Calgary last year at 1,470,000, and Foothills MD is around 80 some thousand IIRC it could be what bumped it up to the 1,558,588. Looking at the Stascan page for the Calgary map, it appears Foothills isn't part of the count. Maybe it's related to undercounts over a 5 year period?

Toronto 6,685,621 (6,547,381) +138,240
Vancouver 2,842,730 (2,764,932) +77,798
Calgary 1,608,342 (1,558,588) +49,754
Montréal 4,378,796 (4,340,642) +38,154
Edmonton 1,516,719 ( 1,480,159) +36,560
Ottawa 1,498,610 (1,474,077) +24,553
Kitchener 622,497 (599,816) +22,681
Winnipeg 871,778 (858,848) +12,930
Québec 848,776 (836,615) +12,161
Hamilton 821,839 (811,396) +10,443
Victoria 423,136 (413,859) +9,277
Saskatoon 347,536 (339,870) +7,666
Kelowna 235,473 (229,003) +6,470
Regina 268,804 (264,375) +4,429
Lethbridge 133,064 (130,088) +2.976


FmRrpqCaEAE2jf7.jpg
 
kora said:
It must be an undercount. There's no other way we going from being 7000 population behind Ottawa in the census and then 100,000 ahead in 2022
Click to expand...
Once the ripples from the pandemic and all the demographic chaos that stemmed from it fade in a few years, it'll be easier to see the trend as the estimates have more uncertainty than previous years. The massive 2022 immigration growth numbers, was largely a function of a complete collapse in immigration in 2020 and part of 2021, for example.

Data quirks aside, the "cities are dying, too expensive and everyone will work remotely from small towns" crowd that was quite vocal in the pandemic, got rejected pretty hard with this forecast update as it fully reverts us back to the long-term trend and then some. The major cities are and will remain the engines of Canada indefinitely.
 
kora said:
It must be an undercount. There's no other way we going from being 7000 population behind Ottawa in the census and then 100,000 ahead in 2022
Click to expand...
The numbers are kind of confusing. I was thinking if Foothills MD was added it would be 80 some K, and then you add on the 25K extra growth above Ottawa's that we had last year, subtract the 7000 less than Ottawa we had last year, it comes out close to the 110K difference we are at now. But that would also mean that Edmonton would have had to have done the same thing as they were showing as 1,480,000 last year. They also state they are using 2016 maps. Who knows.
 
Surrealplaces said:
The numbers are kind of confusing. I was thinking if Foothills MD was added it would be 80 some K, and then you add on the 25K extra growth above Ottawa's that we had last year, subtract the 7000 less than Ottawa we had last year, it comes out close to the 110K difference we are at now. But that would also mean that Edmonton would have had to have done the same thing as they were showing as 1,480,000 last year. They also state they are using 2016 maps. Who knows.
Click to expand...
It would make sense. But as you said, the current CMA map for 2021 shows no addition of Foothills
 
kora said:
It must be an undercount. There's no other way we going from being 7000 population behind Ottawa in the census and then 100,000 ahead in 2022
Click to expand...

The population estimates created for every year by Statistics Canada are a different data series than the census. For some reason -- I suspect historical consistency -- they aren't actually adjusted to match the census. Statistics Canada seems to prize being able to compare a number today to a number from 30 years ago above the number today being accurate or relevant. All three of these things are important, but accurate, relevant data is IMO more important for trying to understand what's happening today! I've had the exact discussion with Statistics Canada representatives on a different data topic; there are two programs that produce two different counts that both purport to be the same thing for the same place at the same time, (the number of employed people in a CMA) and they say that both of them are equally correct.

I believe -- this is more gut than reading detailed methodology -- that the annual population estimates are basically a running total; that is, at some point in the distant past, they started with the Census population. Each year, they take administrative data and estimates of same to produce estimates of how many people moved into and out of each area, how many people were born and died, and that produces an updated estimate. This methodology makes sense on a year-to-year basis; how else could you produce a 2022 estimate than taking the change versus the 2021 estimate? But it's like if you wanted to put a series of marks down a hallway one foot apart and you used a ruler rather than a tape measure; the errors can propagate from year to year, add up, and eventually you're a long ways away from the truth. (One minor thing is that the Census population is officially the population in early May - in 2021 it was May 11, and the estimate is July 1, which means that there is also 1/7 of a year or so in population changes.)

The Census count is a much better value, since it's a start-from-scratch measure, rather than a continuous series of adjustments. So I take that as ground truth.

Here's the annual population estimates as well as the actual Census counts:

1673636059261.png


It's a challenge -- the estimate for Calgary is over 75,000 people high versus the Census count - 5% high, so it's not really all that meaningful anymore, but it wouldn't make sense to say that the population dropped 75,000 between the 2020 estimate and the 2021 actual count. And that's why the 2021 Census says that Ottawa had 7000 more people than Calgary but the 2022 estimate says that Calgary has 100,000 more. It's that the Calgary estimate is 75,000 high and the Ottawa estimate is 15,000 low.

In reality, if you want to know how many people live somewhere, you need to use the Census number; the population estimate is the best up-to-dateish information about the way the population is changing, but in absolute terms, it's really more "vibes" than "facts".
 
It's interesting that Ottawa's estimates follow closely with actual census data while Calgary and to a lesser extent Edmonton are way off. I guess what's important from that chart are the trend lines which show the Alberta cities growing much faster over the past 20 years and converging with Ottawa, minus the last 5-year census period
 
I don't remember where I was reading it, but I'm pretty sure it was on statscan's page stating that the estimates were actually more accurate than the census. Here's all I could find from statscan today, It doesn't really say which one is more accurate only that the census isn't always accurate, but also says the estimates arent always accurate either. The other artivle i'm thinking of mentioned that the estimates were ties to various things like tax records, and employer records, EI, etc.. basically anything that come into the government that ties people to geography.

This blurb from the statscan page may give some insight into why we are seeing some big differences. This is from March 2022, but says there will be some updates to the estimates between 2016 and 2023. It's not September yet, but maybe they are early? If not, we may see some new estimate is September.
Postcensal coverage study results are usually available two years after enumeration date. These will be used to revise and update the population estimates based on the 2021 Census results. Consequently, a series of revised population estimates for the period 2016 to 2023 will be disseminated in September 2023.


ByeByeBaby said:
The population estimates created for every year by Statistics Canada are a different data series than the census. For some reason -- I suspect historical consistency -- they aren't actually adjusted to match the census. Statistics Canada seems to prize being able to compare a number today to a number from 30 years ago above the number today being accurate or relevant. All three of these things are important, but accurate, relevant data is IMO more important for trying to understand what's happening today! I've had the exact discussion with Statistics Canada representatives on a different data topic; there are two programs that produce two different counts that both purport to be the same thing for the same place at the same time, (the number of employed people in a CMA) and they say that both of them are equally correct.

I believe -- this is more gut than reading detailed methodology -- that the annual population estimates are basically a running total; that is, at some point in the distant past, they started with the Census population. Each year, they take administrative data and estimates of same to produce estimates of how many people moved into and out of each area, how many people were born and died, and that produces an updated estimate. This methodology makes sense on a year-to-year basis; how else could you produce a 2022 estimate than taking the change versus the 2021 estimate? But it's like if you wanted to put a series of marks down a hallway one foot apart and you used a ruler rather than a tape measure; the errors can propagate from year to year, add up, and eventually you're a long ways away from the truth. (One minor thing is that the Census population is officially the population in early May - in 2021 it was May 11, and the estimate is July 1, which means that there is also 1/7 of a year or so in population changes.)

The Census count is a much better value, since it's a start-from-scratch measure, rather than a continuous series of adjustments. So I take that as ground truth.

Here's the annual population estimates as well as the actual Census counts:



It's a challenge -- the estimate for Calgary is over 75,000 people high versus the Census count - 5% high, so it's not really all that meaningful anymore, but it wouldn't make sense to say that the population dropped 75,000 between the 2020 estimate and the 2021 actual count. And that's why the 2021 Census says that Ottawa had 7000 more people than Calgary but the 2022 estimate says that Calgary has 100,000 more. It's that the Calgary estimate is 75,000 high and the Ottawa estimate is 15,000 low.

In reality, if you want to know how many people live somewhere, you need to use the Census number; the population estimate is the best up-to-dateish information about the way the population is changing, but in absolute terms, it's really more "vibes" than "facts".
Click to expand...
 
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I’ve seen that also, somewhere that people were saying, the estimates were actually more accurate. Might’ve been on SSP, can’t remember. The thing with the census is I think they can be out by 2.5% or something which for Calgary could be 40,000 people. I’ve known people in Calgary, who didn’t complete their census. It would be interesting to know what the actual percentage of people who don’t fill them out are. Also, in a government city like Ottawa, you might get a higher percentage of people filling them out.

Whatever the true numbers really are, one thing for sure, Calgary is seeing some big growth. When I was younger, I always figured I would see Calgary hit 1 million, but wasn’t sure if I would live long enough to see Calgary hit 2 million. At the rate we’re going that’s going to be fairly soon.
 
kora said:
It must be an undercount. There's no other way we going from being 7000 population behind Ottawa in the census and then 100,000 ahead in 2022
Click to expand...
110,000 * 😉💅
 
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