Quebec lost residents to rest of Canada for 30 years straight

In Canada, where people can move between provinces in search of higher living standards and new opportunities, migration patterns can indicate the relative success or failure of provinces. And as noted in a new study, Quebec has been losing residents to the rest of Canada for 30 years.

People incur considerable costs when moving between provinces (leaving friends and family, selling their homes and finding new housing, etc.). So generally speaking, fewer people will choose to move to a new province unless there are real benefits (e.g. higher paying job) to offset the cost of moving.

Over the past 30 years, Quebec has largely failed to attract other Canadians to the province. Specifically, between 1995/96 and 2024/25, Quebec saw 255,988 more residents leave for elsewhere in Canada than the number of Canadians that moved to the province—the highest net loss of any other province in Canada (these numbers do not include immigrants from other countries). This outflow persisted every year for 30 years straight, and there wasn’t a single year when Quebec enjoyed a net inflow of people coming to the province from other provinces.

Where did these people go? During this 30-year period, of the 255,988 people (on net) that left Quebec, 168,466 went to Ontario. In other words, while Ontario has proved a very attractive destination for Quebecers, Quebec has been a far less attractive destination for Ontarians.

On the bright side, Quebec has been able to attract more people (on net) from three provinces—New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Manitoba. And of the 4,112 people that moved to Quebec (on net) from these three provinces, three out of every four came from New Brunswick.

In many ways, this failure to attract people from the rest of Canada represents a missed opportunity for the province. When any province is an attractive place to live and work, it can benefit from incoming high-skilled workers such as doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs who all contribute greatly to the economy.

Of course, there are many reasons why people choose to move between provinces, and those reasons can be both economic (seeking better employment, lower taxes, higher standard of living, etc.) and personal (moving for family/marriage, better climate, retirement, etc.). Quebec’s high taxes and low economic growth (which impacts the availability of high-paying jobs) may dissuade Canadians from moving to the province. And obviously, Canadians who don’t speak French may not feel comfortable moving to a place where French is the dominant language.

Over the past 30 years, despite its significance within Canada, Quebec has largely failed to attract people from the rest of the country. If policymakers want to change this trend, they must enact policies that make Quebec a more attractive place to work and live.