More than 40% of Canadian births had foreign-born mothers in 2024: StatCan

A woman holds her newborn baby girl in the mother baby unit at the Humber River Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto on Wednesday, December 9, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

New data from Statistics Canada is shedding light on the contribution of foreign-born mothers to annual Canadian births, which would have fallen significantly since 2010 without them, the agency says.

A new study released on Thursday found that in 2024, more than 40 per cent of babies were born to a mother who themselves was not born in Canada. That’s compared to just 22.5 per cent in 1997, according to StatCan.

The study also found that in 2024, 57 per cent of new mothers over the age of 40 were foreign born.

“The annual number of births to foreign-born mothers generally increased from 1997 (78,785) to 2024 (154,687),” study author Claudine Provencher wrote.

“The biggest exception to this trend was the period from 2019 (126,516) to 2020 (123,594), when this number decreased 2.3 per cent. This decline coincided with the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a year marked by the lowest population growth (in number) since 1945.”

From 2022 to 2024, however, Canada saw an influx of newcomers and the number of births to foreign-born mothers increased considerably, according to StatCan, growing 3.4 per cent in 2022, 8.9 per cent in 2023, and 11.7 per cent in 2024.

The study also noted that during the period examined, “births to Canadian-born mothers followed a different trajectory than births to foreign-born mothers.”

“Following almost constant annual declines in the number of births until 2002 (247,792), a period of growth followed until 2009 (281,309),” wrote Provencher.

“This period was marked by the federal government enhancing parental leave, adding 25 weeks of parental benefits to the existing 10 weeks, for a total of 50 weeks including maternity leave.”

There was then a subsequent decline in births to Canadian-born mothers in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, which accelerated further in 2020 at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After a rebound in 2021, which saw births to Canadian-born mothers increase by 4.8 per cent, the downward trend continued in 2022, when such births fell by 8.6 per cent, followed by a decrease of six per cent in 2023 and 1.4 per cent in 2024.

“In fact, the temporary increase in births in Canada in 2021 was driven by the contribution of Canadian-born mothers, while foreign-born women gave birth to slightly fewer babies in 2021 compared to 2020,” Provencher wrote.

“In short, given the decline in births among Canadian-born mothers, and without the contribution of foreign-born mothers, births in Canada would have declined sharply as of 2010.”