Statistics Canada has released a report acknowledging a substantial gap in its most recent national headcount, revealing that the agency likely failed to account for a significant portion of non-citizens living in the country.
A Significant Statistical Shortfall
The federal data agency confirmed that its 2021 census missed approximately 38 per cent of non-permanent residents. This group includes individuals living in Canada under temporary statuses, such as international students, temporary foreign workers, and asylum seekers.
While the report cautions that the "missed" rate does not translate directly to a precise number of individuals—as it may include people who were miscounted, duplicated, or had already departed Canada—the scale of the potential undercount is striking. The official 2021 census counted 924,000 non-permanent residents. Applying the 38 per cent missed rate suggests that statisticians were aware of roughly 576,000 more individuals who were believed to be in the country but could not be contacted or confirmed during the census period.
To put that figure into perspective, 576,000 people is a population larger than that of Halifax, Nova Scotia. This admission underscores ongoing difficulties in obtaining accurate, real-time data on Canada's fluid non-citizen population.
External Estimates Suggest an Even Larger Gap
The Statistics Canada report, published in early December 2025, follows previous external analyses that suggested an even more severe undercount. In 2023, CIBC economist Benjamin Tal estimated that the census figures were short by as many as one million non-permanent residents.
Tal's analysis broke down the discrepancy into two parts: an initial undercount of about 250,000 people within the census methodology, plus an estimated 750,000 individuals who had overstayed their visas and whose continued presence was not captured by any official Statistics Canada data stream.
"Between the clear understating of (non-permanent resident) counts in the census, and the exclusion of overstayers in the quarterly demographics statistics, the number of (non-permanent residents) that are missing from official statistics used by planners is approaching one million," Tal wrote at the time.
Implications for Planning and Policy
This latest report is a formal acknowledgment of a known issue. Statistics Canada has stated that undercounts are a common challenge in census-taking worldwide, and it was aware that the 2021 figures did not represent a complete tally of Canada's population.
However, the scale of the gap, particularly within the non-permanent resident category, has significant implications. Accurate population data is foundational for all levels of government planning, affecting the allocation of resources for housing, healthcare, transportation, and education services. A substantial undercount can lead to misinformed policy decisions and inadequate infrastructure planning.
The revelation also adds to a series of recent discussions about the federal government's accuracy in tracking the number of non-citizens in Canada, a topic of considerable political and public debate concerning immigration levels and system integrity.
While Statistics Canada employs rigorous methods and post-census studies to evaluate coverage, the difficulty in tracking a mobile, temporary population highlights the limitations of a once-every-five-years snapshot in an era of rapid demographic change.
