People are fleeing Ontario and B.C. twice as fast as Quebec, new data shows

More Canadians are packing up and leaving the country than they were a year ago, but people in Quebec don’t seem all that interested in joining them.

According to new data from Statistics Canada, about 120,640 people emigrated from Canada in 2025, up roughly 2% from the year before and part of a steady climb that’s been building for a few years now. To put that in perspective, just 60,000 or so people left back in 2020, so the annual number has essentially doubled in five years.

So far, 2026 is pointing in the same direction, with roughly 30,000 people leaving in the first quarter alone (a tad higher than the same stretch of 2025).

Whether it’s cheaper rent, better weather, or just a change of scenery, more and more people are heading for the exits.

But not everyone is leaving at the same pace, and Quebec sits right at the bottom of the list.

Around 15,900 people left Quebec last year. That works out to just 13% of all departures from Canada, even though the province is home to about 22% of the country’s population. In other words, Quebecers are leaving at well under half the rate you’d expect if departures were spread evenly across the country. And it’s not a one-year blip either. Quebec’s share of national emigration has held steady at right around 13% for four years running, even as the total number of people leaving the country keeps rising.

Ontario, meanwhile, led the way by a wide margin. About 56,000 people emigrated from there in 2025, close to 47% of the national total (from a province that makes up roughly 39% of the population). British Columbia is the other standout. Just over 25,000 people left B.C. last year, more than all of Quebec, despite B.C. having only about two-thirds of Quebec’s population.

Line the big provinces up against their populations and you’ll find that people in Ontario are leaving at about twice Quebec’s rate, and in B.C. it’s closer to two and a half times. Alberta lands somewhere in between, a little above the national average. Among the smaller provinces the departures are modest, with Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Atlantic provinces each seeing a few thousand or fewer, but relative to their size, some of them still edge out Quebec.

Quebec also tends to see relatively little interprovincial movement, meaning people here aren’t just staying in Canada, they’re staying in the province. Family ties, language, and the plain cost of picking up and moving in a shaky economy all likely play a part.

As rent, housing, and the general cost of living keep pushing people to make big decisions, Canadians are certainly on the move, just not so much in la belle province.

You can explore the full StatCan data here.