Population of Canada
overview of the population of Canada
Canada ranks 37th by population among countries of the world, comprising about 0.5% of the world's total, with about 41.5 million Canadians as of Q1 2026. Despite being the second-largest country by total area (fourth-largest by land area), the vast majority of the country is sparsely inhabited, with most of its population south of the 55th parallel north. Just over 60% of Canadians live in just two provinces: Ontario and Quebec. Though Canada's overall population density is low, many regions in the south, such as the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor, have population densities higher than several European countries. Canada has six population centres with more than one million people: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa.
The large size of Canada's north, which is currently not arable, and thus cannot support large human populations, significantly lowers the country's carrying capacity relative to its size. In 2021, the population density of Canada was 4.2 people per square kilometre.
The historical growth of Canada's population is complex and has been influenced in many different ways, such as Indigenous populations, expansion of territory, and human migration. Immigration has been, and remains, the most important factor in Canada's population growth. The 2021 Canadian census counted a total population of 36,991,981, an increase of around 5.2 per cent over the 2016 figure.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Population of Canada” is overview of the population of Canada. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Population, Canada and overview, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “overview of the population of Canada” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3398036. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2026, 2021 and 2016.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Population of Canada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.