Statistics Canada revises downwards the number of asylum seekers in Quebec

With a wave of a magic wand, or rather a statistical one, Quebec, which accounted for 52% of all asylum seekers in Canada, now only accounts for 41%.

Statistics Canada released its estimates of non-permanent residents for the third quarter of 2024 on Wednesday. The agency took the opportunity to retroactively review its figures. The main change concerns the regional distribution of asylum seekers. With these new calculations, Quebec, in the second quarter, had 151,000 asylum seekers, rather than the previous figure of 190,000, or 39,000 fewer. It now has 163,000.

Good to know: in the category of asylum seekers, Statistics Canada includes people holding refugee status and related groups.

The agency revised upwards the figures for Ontario, which had 31,000 more asylum seekers in the second quarter compared to the previous data.

The number of asylum seekers remains similar for the Canadian total. It can be deduced that these new estimates reflect the movement of asylum seekers from one province to another.

This issue was the subject of a debate between Quebec and Ottawa. Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller and his department believed that Statistics Canada’s data did not take into account the relocation of asylum seekers and refugees after filing their applications.

The rise continues

That said, non-permanent residents continue to increase in Quebec and Canada. They have gone from 551,000 to 588,000 in Quebec, according to revised Statistics Canada data, and from 2.8 million to 3 million in Canada as a whole.

Non-permanent residents, also called temporary immigrants, represent 6.5% of the Quebec population and 7.2% of all Canadians. This population is made up of three groups: work permit holders, study permit holders and asylum seekers.

While there are slightly fewer study permit holders in Quebec compared to the last quarter, the number of work permit holders has increased by 10%.