Interprovincial migration in Canada is the movement by people from one Canadian province or territory to another with the intention of settling, permanently or temporarily, in the new province or territory; it is more-or-less stable over time. In fiscal year 2019–20, 278,316 Canadians migrated province, representing 0.729% of the population. The Interprovincial migration levels of each province can be construed as a way to measure the success of each jurisdiction. The main measurement used is net interprovincial migration, which is simply the difference between residents moving out of a province (out-migration) and the number of residents from other provinces moving into that province (in-migration). Since 1971, the provinces which received the most net cumulative interprovincial migrants (adjusted for population) were Alberta and British Columbia, while the provinces which had the largest net loss of interprovincial migrants (adjusted for population) were Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces.
History
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Canadians who left their home province to settle elsewhere usually went to the United States rather than to other Canadian provinces. In fact, from the early years of confederation to the 1930s, Quebec and the Maritimes experienced a period of mass emigration to the United States. From 1860 to 1920, half a million people left the Maritimes, while about 900,000 French Canadians left Quebec between 1840 and 1930 to immigrate to the United States, mainly New England. However, some French Canadians and Maritimers were also drawn to Ontario in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the development of mining and forestry resources in the northeastern and eastern regions of the province attracted a large workforce. This migration significantly increased the proportion of Francophones in Ontario. The Francophone population of Ontario continues to be concentrated mainly in the northeastern and eastern parts, close to the border with Quebec, although smaller pockets of Francophone settlement exist throughout the province. After Manitoba joined Confederation in 1870, the new provincial government was controlled by Anglo Canadians. The agreement for the establishment of the province had included guarantees that the Métis would receive grants of land and that their existing unofficial landholdings would be recognized. These guarantees were largely ignored. New anglophone migrants coming from Ontario were instead given most of the land. Facing this discrimination, the Métis moved in large numbers to what would become Saskatchewan and Alberta. Starting in 1871, the Canadian government entered multiple treaties with indigenous nations to gain their consent to take their lands "for immigration and settlement" in the area of the former Rupert's Land (although many of the treaty terms made to get this consent were subsequently violated by Canada). The Dominion government then passed the Dominion Lands Act in 1872 to encourage the settlement of the Canadian Prairies, and to help prevent the area from being claimed by the United States. The act gave a claimant 160 acres (or 65 hectares) for free, the only cost to the farmer being a $10 administration fee. Any male farmer who was at least 21 years of age and agreed to cultivate at least 40 acres (16 ha) of the land and build a permanent dwelling on it (within three years) qualified. The population of the Canadian prairies grew rapidly in the last decade of the 19th century, and the population of Saskatchewan quintupled from 91,000 in 1901 to 492,000 to 1911. However, the vast majority of these people were immigrants from Europe. Interprovincial migration in Canada was at its highest in the first 20 years of the 20th century, and started to decrease in the 1920s. Out-emigration from Quebec dramatically spiked in 1977, one year after the Parti Québécois won the 1976 Quebec general elections. It spiked again in 1996, one year after the 1995 Quebec referendum. This second spike was, however, 37.5% the size of the 1977 spike. Migration from Atlantic Canada to Ontario and the West in search of economic opportunity is longstanding phenomenon. It is depicted in works including Goin' Down the Road (1970), a key piece in Canadian film history. The cod collapse in the early 1990s and the 1992 moratorium on cod fishing led to the migration of workers from Atlantic Canada (particularly Newfoundland and Labrador) to Alberta. Fishing had previously been a major driver of the economies of the Atlantic provinces, and this loss of work proved catastrophic for many families. As a result, beginning in the early 1990s and into the late 2000s, thousands of people from the Atlantic provinces were driven out-of-province to find work elsewhere in the country, especially in the Alberta oil sands during the oil boom of the mid-2000s. This systemic export of labour is explored by author Kate Beaton in her 2022 graphic memoir Ducks, which details her experience working in the Athabasca oil sands.
Influences A number of factors have been identified by academic research in influencing interprovincial migration.
Demographic factors The odds of a Canadian moving from one province to another is inversely related to the home province's population size: the larger the province, the less likely a resident is to move away. Interprovincial migration is negatively related to marriage, and the presence of children for both men and women. Younger people also tend to be more mobile than their older counterparts. Men are more likely to move than women, although men's rates of interprovincial migration are declining slightly while women's are holding steadier or rising slightly. Interprovincial migration is also more common among residents of smaller cities, towns, and especially rural areas than for residents of larger cities. The largest Canadian population centres (Toronto, Vancouver, Montréal, Calgary and Edmonton) also tend to attract the largest amount of interprovincial migrants, and there is a lot of flow between these cities.
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