Douglas Todd: With a cyclical downturn in big-city real estate, the development industry is urging politicians to bring back domestic investors and foreign buyers

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For the first time in 74 years, the population of both B.C. and Ontario dropped by a few thousand people in the first months of 2025.

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Sounds dramatic. And in some ways it is.

That’s even though the dip in the total number of people doesn’t make a statistical difference for either province. In the first quarter of this year, B.C. had 2,357 fewer residents than at the end of 2024; Ontario lost 5,644.

But, as Statistics Canada says: “While small compared to the size of each province, these were the largest quarterly losses in population for both Ontario and B.C. since comparable records began in 1951.”

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In each of the past two years B.C. had added more than 160,000 people, an unprecedented annual growth rate of more than three per cent, almost all of it fuelled by Ottawa’s openness to international migration.

The fact this year has seen the most significant dip in the two provinces’ populations in almost three generations appears to signal the end of Canada’s recent ultra-high migration experiment.

This new phenomenon, a population standstill, is having repercussions, especially on the housing market.

The federal Liberals, after a decade in power, seem to have finally got the public’s message that their policies were creating too much demand on housing and rents. As a result, in May Prime Minister Mark Carney said, albeit vaguely, that his government will bring “overall immigration rates to sustainable levels.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, is becoming bolder. Last month he said he wants “severe limits” on population growth to restore some equilibrium to jobs, social services and housing.

Such talk is alarming the property development industry, which is experiencing a softening of demand. Even though many analysts say it’s simply part of the real-estate cycle, developers are renewing calls for a return to more foreign buyers in Canadian housing.

Coinciding with the change in attitude among Ottawa’s politicians, StatCan has just published two reports that highlight........

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