The number of English Canadians having migrated to Quebec has never been so high since the 1970s. And again, because at that time English-speaking Quebecers were fleeing en masse from La Belle Province. This renewed attraction to Quebec can be explained above all by the cheaper life on this side of the Ottawa River.
After decades of negative results, Quebec’s net migration was almost zero between 2016 and 2021, Statistics Canada revealed earlier this week. This change in trend is mainly due to English-speaking citizens who move to Quebec.
Thus, there are almost as many people leaving Quebec for Canada (90,000 people) as the reverse (84,000 people).
The last time that Quebec attracted so many Canadians dates back to the end of the 1960s, until 1976. Even if, at the time, the migratory balance remained strongly negative, because the threat of independence caused Anglophones to flee of Quebec. Nearly 180,000 of them left between 1966 and 1976 and no less than 150,000 between 1976 and 1981.
Blame it on the economy
Marc Termote, a demographer who has been following these trends for decades, indicates that a large part of this new migration is concentrated in western Quebec, and in particular in Gatineau. He calls this phenomenon the “suburbanization of Ottawa.”
Government work guides these people to the Canadian capital, then “we go to Gatineau because it costs less than Ottawa,” he says.
Statistics Canada validates this perception by stipulating that among the 121,000 English-speaking Quebec residents born in another province, 78,000 were born in Ontario. And that, among these native-born Ontarians, 30,000 lived in Outaouais.
Quebec’s robust economy encourages this migration, Statistics Canada confirms in its information bulletin: “ [cette migration vers le Québec entre 2016 et 2021] coincided with historically low unemployment rates in the province.”
This wave of Canadians in Quebec will not change the linguistic composition of Quebec, finally nuances Marc Termote. The figures are “relatively small” and are not likely to change major trends.
This report is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.