Canada has officially entered what demographers call the “ultra-low fertility” era a stage once unthinkable for a nation that boomed with baby carriages in the post-war years. According to fresh data from Statistics Canada, the country’s fertility rate has fallen to a record low of 1.25 children per woman in 2024 a number that’s as sobering as it is historic.
For context, a country needs a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman just to maintain its population without relying on immigration. Canada slipped below that level more than five decades ago, in 1972, and it’s been drifting downward ever since. But the current rate marks a new frontier one shared only by a handful of other nations facing demographic decline: Japan, South Korea, Italy, and a few others in Europe.
While the decline slowed slightly compared to previous years, it’s cold comfort. Nine out of 13 provinces and territories hit record lows in 2024. British Columbia long known for its high cost of living and expensive housing recorded the lowest fertility rate in the country at 1.02, barely above one child per woman.
The reasons behind this decline aren’t mysterious. The average age of childbearing in Canada now sits at 31.8 years, up from just 26.7 in the mid-1970s. People are waiting longer not because they don’t want families, but because building one feels increasingly out of reach. Housing is unaffordable, wages haven’t kept pace with inflation, and child care remains a financial and logistical nightmare for many.
A report from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute earlier this year called the fertility crisis a “major public policy challenge requiring immediate federal action.” It pointed out that surveys consistently show Canadian women would like to have more children than they actually do. The gap between desire and reality has never been wider.
The problem isn’t that Canadians have stopped valuing family it’s that they’re being priced out of it. In cities like Toronto and Vancouver, even middle-class couples struggle to afford a home big enough for children, let alone the rising costs of food, education, and child care.
Economist Ross McKitrick, who authored the MLI report, argued that public policy has long focused on reducing fertility in poorer countries but ignored the opposite challenge now facing the developed world. “There has been a great deal of effort directed at preventing unwanted pregnancies,” he wrote. “But there has been very little attention paid to preventing the other unwanted outcome: reaching the end of one’s fertility without having had as many children as one had hoped for.”
He’s right. The Canadian dream stable job, affordable home, and a couple of kids has quietly slipped out of reach for many young adults. Instead, they’re left juggling gig work, sky-high rents, and mounting debt. Parenthood, for too many, feels like a luxury.
If Canada wants to avoid the fate of countries like Japan or South Korea, where aging populations have strained economies and social systems, it needs to act now. That means reducing the cost of living, making family-friendly housing a reality, improving child-care access, and shifting cultural norms to once again celebrate not sideline parenthood.
This isn’t just about numbers or charts. It’s about the kind of country Canada wants to be in 50 years vibrant and growing, or aging and shrinking. Fertility may seem like a private matter, but its consequences are profoundly public. And right now, Canada’s future looks like it’s running out of children.
