Opinion
Canada’s fertility, marriage rates plummet to record lows: report

From LifeSiteNews
Canada’s fertility rate hit a record low of 1.33 children per woman in 2022, according to a recently released report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
A recently released report from major Canadian think tank the Macdonald-Laurier Institute has painted a dire picture for Canada’s future, noting that the nation’s marriage and fertility rates are at extreme lows and have been on the steady decline for years.
According to the report, titled, “Decline and fall: Trends in family formation and fertility in Canada since 2001, the number of never-been-married Canadian adults has increased significantly since 2001, notably among those 45 years and younger.
The report notes that being in a single, unmarried state for those under 30 has become the norm and that because of a decline in marriage rates, Canada’s fertility rates have been impacted as well.
Also troubling is that amongst couples that do get married, many of them are choosing not to have kids, and those that do only have children only have one or two, which is not statistically sufficient in boosting Canada’s birth rate into positive territory.
The report released concerning findings relating to the decline of the traditional nuclear family, noting that the proportion of those aged 25-29 who “are in a couple dropped by 10.9 percentage points between 2001-2021.”
“Younger people are increasingly delaying marriage or common-law relationships into the late 30s or early 40s, with a growing fraction of people remaining single well into middle age,” notes the report.
Also, Canada’s fertility rate was only “1.3 in 2022, down from 1.6 in 2016,” it noted.
Canada’s fertility rate hit a record low of 1.33 children per woman in 2022. According to the data collected by Statistics Canada, this is the lowest fertility rate in the past century of record keeping. For context, in the same year, 97,211 Canadian babies were killed by abortion.
Instead of promoting marriage and child-bearing, the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has instead resorted to using immigration to boost the population.
Governments should ‘worry’ about low birth rates
According to Dr. Tim Sargent, Deputy Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, as noted in the Macdonald-Laurier Institute report, “Governments have every reason to worry.”
“The most important step in addressing these problems is perhaps… to recognize that the declining family formation, dropping marriage rates, and deteriorating fertility are serious problems facing our society, and they should be a top priority for policymakers in our country,” noted Sargent.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute noted that Canada needs to ensure that there are “policies that make housing more affordable, use the tax system to incentivize family growth and the raising of children, subsidize daycare, and address the rising problem of credentialism by finding ways to reduce the formal educational requirements for jobs will allow young people to marry, afford a house, and have children earlier.”
Some positives from the report note that in Canada, despite the fact of the current Liberal government, there are “incredible benefits, both in terms of income and broader well-being” by starting a family.
“Adjusting for economies of scale (recognizing that couples require only 1.5 the income of a single person to have the same standard of living) the average single 35-45-year-old has only 49.2 percent of the income of their coupled counterpart,” notes the report.
“Single parent homes have approximately 35-40 percent less income per family member relative to a two-parent family.”
The report observed that married couples have a “significantly lower incidence of, and better survival rates from both cancer and cardiovascular disease, are less stressed, and are less likely to suffer from depression and other emotional pathologies.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews earlier this month, a survey showed that more and more Canadians are delaying the start of families due to the rising cost of living.
Also, instead of embracing new and current life, as taught by the Catholic Church, Trudeau’s government has instead promoted abortion, contraception, and euthanasia.
As noted by LifeSiteNews contributor Jonathon Van Maren, a recent scheme by the Trudeau Liberals to offer free contraception to all Canadians, will only worsen Canada’s current demographic crisis.
“Canada, like any nation, needs babies. This is an obvious, undeniable fact. It is also a truth that few seem capable of uttering,” wrote Van Maren.
“Justin Trudeau is passionate about abortion, and his government is one of the most aggressive proponents of feticide in the world. Canada’s taxpayers fund the killing of the very children we desperately need.”
Business
It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers
The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.
Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.
These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.
Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.
In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.
Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.
According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.
Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.
A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.
These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.
Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.
Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Alberta
Governments in Alberta should spur homebuilding amid population explosion

From the Fraser Institute
By Tegan Hill and Austin Thompson
In 2024, construction started on 47,827 housing units—the most since 48,336 units in 2007 when population growth was less than half of what it was in 2024.
Alberta has long been viewed as an oasis in Canada’s overheated housing market—a refuge for Canadians priced out of high-cost centres such as Vancouver and Toronto. But the oasis is starting to dry up. House prices and rents in the province have spiked by about one-third since the start of the pandemic. According to a recent Maru poll, more than 70 per cent of Calgarians and Edmontonians doubt they will ever be able to afford a home in their city. Which raises the question: how much longer can this go on?
Alberta’s housing affordability problem reflects a simple reality—not enough homes have been built to accommodate the province’s growing population. The result? More Albertans competing for the same homes and rental units, pushing prices higher.
Population growth has always been volatile in Alberta, but the recent surge, fuelled by record levels of immigration, is unprecedented. Alberta has set new population growth records every year since 2022, culminating in the largest-ever increase of 186,704 new residents in 2024—nearly 70 per cent more than the largest pre-pandemic increase in 2013.
Homebuilding has increased, but not enough to keep pace with the rise in population. In 2024, construction started on 47,827 housing units—the most since 48,336 units in 2007 when population growth was less than half of what it was in 2024.
Moreover, from 1972 to 2019, Alberta added 2.1 new residents (on average) for every housing unit started compared to 3.9 new residents for every housing unit started in 2024. Put differently, today nearly twice as many new residents are potentially competing for each new home compared to historical norms.
While Alberta attracts more Canadians from other provinces than any other province, federal immigration and residency policies drive Alberta’s population growth. So while the provincial government has little control over its population growth, provincial and municipal governments can affect the pace of homebuilding.
For example, recent provincial amendments to the city charters in Calgary and Edmonton have helped standardize building codes, which should minimize cost and complexity for builders who operate across different jurisdictions. Municipal zoning reforms in Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer have made it easier to build higher-density housing, and Lethbridge and Medicine Hat may soon follow suit. These changes should make it easier and faster to build homes, helping Alberta maintain some of the least restrictive building rules and quickest approval timelines in Canada.
There is, however, room for improvement. Policymakers at both the provincial and municipal level should streamline rules for building, reduce regulatory uncertainty and development costs, and shorten timelines for permit approvals. Calgary, for instance, imposes fees on developers to fund a wide array of public infrastructure—including roads, sewers, libraries, even buses—while Edmonton currently only imposes fees to fund the construction of new firehalls.
It’s difficult to say how long Alberta’s housing affordability woes will endure, but the situation is unlikely to improve unless homebuilding increases, spurred by government policies that facilitate more development.
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