How people get to work in Canada (American Sign Language) - Video transcript
(The Statistics Canada logo, the Canada wordmark and the title: How people get to work in Canada (American Sign Language) is on screen)
The way Canadians commute was altered in 2021 by the pandemic. Lockdowns to slow the spread of COVID-19 and changes in how and where Canadians worked led to 2.8 million fewer commuters, compared with five years earlier.
The number of Canadians car commuting, meaning travelling to work by car, truck or van as a driver or as a passenger, declined by 1.7 million from 2016 to 2021. This drop mainly occurred among those working in professional service industries, while the number of front-line workers commuting by car increased.
There were 245,000 fewer Canadians making car commutes of at least 60 minutes, compared with May 2016.
The number of people usually taking public transit to work fell from 2 million in 2016 to 1 million in May 2021. This number declined for the first time since the census began collecting commuting data in 1996.
The number of car commuters had exceeded 2016 levels by May 2022, at 12.8 million. However, the number of public transit commuters remained well below pre-COVID-19 levels, at 1.2 million.
Despite the drop in public transit use, the proportion of Canadians using mass transit or active transit such as walking or cycling to get to work was higher than that of Americans.
Nearly 300,000 fewer workers were usually using active transit as a main mode of commuting in May 2021, compared with 2016. By May 2022, active transit commuting in the provinces had increased to 941,000 from 788,000 in May 2021. This number was still lower than the 1.1 million recorded in 2016.
(The Canada wordmark is on screen)