Foreign-born mothers gave birth to nearly half of Ontario and B.C.’s babies in 2024: Statistics Canada

Nearly half of all mothers who had babies in Ontario and B.C. in 2024 were born outside of Canada, according to new data released by Statistics Canada. A total of 48.7 percent of all babies born in those two provinces were from mothers who emigrated to Canada. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic provinces foreign-born mothers made up only 23.6 percent of births in 2024—the lowest rate in the country. In Ontario, foreign-born mothers gave birth to 70,037 babies in 2024 compared to Canadian-born mothers giving birth to 73,650. Meanwhile, foreign-born mothers in B.C. had 21,392 babies and Canadian-born mothers gave birth to 22,494. Out of the 365,737 newborns delivered across all of Canada last year, 154,687 (42.3 percent) had foreign-born mothers, compared to 211,050 (57.8 percent) babies with Canadian-born mothers. The statistics further highlight the rapidly declining fertility rate of the domestic population. The latest Statistics Canada data shows the proportion of foreign-born mothers giving birth is nearly double what it was 25 years ago, jumping from 22.5 percent in 1997 to 42.3 percent today. This latest baby boom from foreign-born mothers coincides with the Trudeau government welcoming a record number of new immigrants to Canada in the last few years, with the population growing from 37.9 million at the start of 2020 to 41.5 million by the end of 2024, almost entirely due to the surge in immigration. The overall fertility rate—the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime—in Canada hit a new record low in 2024, dropping to 1.25 children per woman, down from 1.26 children the previous year. This is well below the replacement level fertility rate of 2.1. Canada now ranks alongside Japan, 1.15, and South Korea, 0.75, as “lowest low” for fertility rates in the developed world. The latest study found that if foreign-born mothers hadn’t contributed to births in Canada, the country’s natural increase (the number of births minus the number of deaths) would have been negative since 2022. Over the last quarter century, the proportion of mothers from India (the number one country of origin) giving birth in Canada nearly multiplied by five, rising from 2.1 percent of all births in 1997 to 10.3 percent in 2024. Mothers from the Philippines came in second at 3.1 percent. Mothers from China came in third, and were responsible for 2 percent of all births. Recent research on declining fertility rates across the developed world, including from the United Nations Population Fund, found that the number one reason for would-be parents delaying or not having children was financial limitations. Last October, Angus Reid conducted a poll revealing 74 percent of 35- to 44-year-old Canadians were delaying having kids. For all Canadians of child-bearing years, the reasons for delaying having children included job/financial security (41 percent), finding the right partner (40 percent), affording childcare (33 percent), and lack of affordable long-term housing (31 percent). Canada’s fertility rate fell in the 1930s during the Great Depression, rose sharply during the Second World War. In the 1960s, the emergence of the contraceptive pill caused the rate to fall rapidly. It’s continued to fall, with some increases since the 1980s, and a tiny boost following the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2021 census, foreign-born women of childbearing age (32.3 percent of childbearing women at the time) were slightly more likely to have children than Canadian-born women. Foreign-born moms accounted for a disproportionate 33 percent of all births.