How and where has the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area grown since 2016?

We visualized the first batch of 2021 census results to show population change in the GTHA.

Pedestrians and cyclists travel on a bike path with the CN Tower in the background — Toronto’s population is growing, but not evenly. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)

Last year, newly released Canadian census data made it official: The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area population has grown since 2016, but not as fast as the national or provincial averages. As we continue to grapple with the ongoing housing crisis, these numbers take on a new, and rising, importance.

The census was conducted in May 2021, and results from it were released in chunks throughout 2022. The first batch dropped in February and included data related to population and where Canadians are living.

Some top-line takeaways:

Canada’s population as a whole grew by 5.2 per cent between 2016 and 2021, from 35.2 million to just shy of 37 million.
Ontario’s population growth outpaced the national average, going from 13.4 million to 14.2 million for an increase of 5.8 per cent.
The population in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area grew by 4.7 per cent, from nearly 7 million to 7.3 million.

But growth was not evenly distributed across the GTHA. While some areas far exceeded the growth rates nationally and provincially, others fell short.

Of the six major GTHA regions, Halton grew the most at 8.8 per cent, and the City of Toronto grew the least at 2.3 per cent. Durham (7.9 per cent), Hamilton (6.0 per cent), York (5.7 per cent), and Peel (5.0 per cent) make up the middle of the growth picture.

Of course, this only begins to scratch at the story’s surface. We broke down the numbers and set them on a map of the GTHA to see where the population is exploding, and where it’s stalling out or even shrinking.

Editor’s note: The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area doesn’t directly line up with the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area. For the purposes of this piece, we are including all census data from the GTHA.

Key points:

Fastest-growing areas included York Region town East Gwillimbury, where the population rose a whopping 44 per cent from 23,991 in 2016 to 34,637 in 2021. Among areas of more than 100,000 residents, Milton rose 20.7 per cent, while Brampton and Oakville gained 10.6 and 10.3 per cent, respectively.
The City of Toronto’s primary downtown grew from 237,698 to 275,931, an increase of 16.1 per cent. According to results, that makes Toronto the seventh-fastest growing downtown in the country. (Halifax is No. 1 in that regard, growing by 26.2 per cent.)
Toronto remains the largest primary downtown in Canada. The next largest is Vancouver at 121,932, which was a 7.4 per cent increase over the 2016 downtown population figure.
While Toronto’s downtown grew substantially, the area around it did not. In fact, many census tracts just outside the core saw a drop in population of five per cent or more. On the whole, the non-downtown portion of the City of Toronto grew by just one per cent.
Mississauga was one of the only GTHA municipalities to experience contraction between 2016 and 2021, if even just slightly. The population fell 0.5 per cent from 721,599 to 717,961. Scugog’s population also fell — from 21,617 to 21,581 — for a 0.2 per cent drop.

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