As a followup to my last post dealing with dealing with Canada's growing population based on the Statistics Canada population estimates for sub-provincial areas as of July 1st, 2023, this post focuses on northern Ontario Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) and Census Agglomerations (CAs). It turns out that the era of declining or stagnant population in northern Ontario urban centers has come to an end. The period from 2001 to 2015 was essentially one of stagnant and even declining population. From 2001 to 2015, Ontario's population grew by 15 percent and its CMAs by 18 percent. However, during this period, Thunder Bay, Elliot Lake, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie, and Kenora all saw declining populations. Only Greater Sudbury saw an increase during this entire period and it was just under 3 percent. Fast forward to the period since 2015 and there has been quite the reversal.
The accompanying figure ranks northern Ontario's CMAs and CAs by their population growth from 2022 to 2023 but includes alongside the growth rate from 2015 to 2023 as well as the accompanying growth rates for all of Ontario, Ontario's CMAs and Ontario's CAs. The results show that from 2022 to 2023, Sault Ste. Marie and Timmins grew the fastest at a population growth rate of nearly 4 percent, followed by North Bay at 3.8 percent, then Greater Sudbury at 2.8 percent, Elliot Lake at 1.6 percent, then Thunder Bay at 1.4 percent and finally Kenora at 0.4 percent. The Sault, Timmins and North Bay all grew faster than both Ontario as a whole as well as either its total CMA population or total CA population.
The results are not as impressive but still quite robust for the entire period from 2015 to 2023. Here, North Bay, Sudbury and Elliot Lake have been growing at rates below Ontario as a whole but still well above 8 percent while Ontario as a whole grew 14 percent. The remaining CMAs and CAs ranged from 0.8 percent (Kenora) to 4.9 percent (Sault Ste. Marie). Overall, while population growth in northern urban centers has picked up, growth has been more robust in the Northeast than the Northwest. While the percent increases place the Sault as the top recent performer, in absolute numbers, Greater Sudbury grew the most from 2022 to 2023 hitting a population of 185, 230 by adding nearly 5,000 people to its population in one year. Greater Sudbury seems well on its way to hitting the Mayor's population target of 200,000 and indeed has already exceeded a recent Ministry of Finance projection of its population hitting 183,871 by 2042. Next came the Sault which added 3,158 and then North Bay adding 2,924. Overall, good news after decades of seeing little to no growth.