Federal boundaries, they are a changing

Every decade since confederation, federal riding boundaries are adjusted to reflect how Canada’s population has changed. Your collective responses to the 2021 Census are the guiding force for these proposed border changes.

How Canada has grown

Over 3.5 million more people called Canada home in 2021 compared with a decade earlier. Approximately 3.8 million were born here and another 3 million immigrated from another land. An estimated 2.7 million moved from one province to another.

Following the 2011 Census, 30 new federal ridings were created, bringing the number of seats in the House of Commons up to 338. No new seats will be added following the 2021 Census, but the average population size of a riding in the provinces will rise from 116,116 to 121,891 people to reflect the population increase over the decade. Each territory is deemed a single riding despite having a total population well below the provincial riding threshold.

Some small places are growing at the fastest pace, while big cities keep getting bigger

Canada’s smallest territory (Yukon +12.1%) and province (Prince Edward Island +8.0%) grew at the fastest pace from 2016 to 2021, while the largest population increases in absolute numbers occurred in Ontario (+775,448), British Columbia (+352,824) and Quebec (+337,472).

The towns of East Gwillimbury (+44.4%) and The Blue Mountains (+33.7%) in Ontario grew at the fastest pace from 2016 to 2021, while Canada’s largest cities of Toronto (+62,765), Montréal (+58,255) and Vancouver (+30,762) saw the largest influx of people overall.

Conversely, the population of Newfoundland and Labrador shrank from 2016 to 2021, while the populations in the oil- and gas-rich counties of Athabasca (-11.6%) and Lac La Biche (-7.9%) in Alberta, and Peace River in British Columbia (-10.8%), fell at the fastest pace over this period.

Riding size reflects population density

While a federal riding may look like a line on a map, the guiding force of a riding is population size. That’s why we have ridings as small as several square kilometres in the densely populated downtowns of Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver and up to tens of thousands of square kilometres in sparsely inhabited northern Canada.

Canada’s population grew by 5.2% from 2016 to 2021, the fastest pace of growth among G7 countries over this period. Most of this growth occurred in urban centres (+6.3%) while the population of rural Canada (+0.4%) grew at a much slower pace.

A quick look at this map shows that federal riding boundaries will need to change in every province to reflect this population growth. These profile tables will show you how the population of your community, city, region or town has changed over the past decade.

While we provide the data that are prompting the change in riding borders, we have no say in how the boundaries are drawn. Elections Canada, a non-partisan agency, proposes new borders based on your census responses.