Hamilton-area population climbs to 812,000 as more leave big cities for 'smaller places'

Hamilton continues to be a city of choice for newcomers to Canada, as well as Canadians leaving bigger cities like Toronto, new data from Statistics Canada shows.

Earlier this month, the federal agency published new annual demographic estimates for subprovincial areas, with data up to July 2021.

According to the new data, 10,196 people took up residence in the Hamilton census metropolitan area — which includes Burlington and Grimsby — for the period 2018-2019 for a total population of 795,410. There were 11,743 new arrivals in 2019-2020 for a total population of 807,153. Between 2020 and July 2021, there have been 5,375 new arrivals with the area's population currently standing at 812,528.

Bruce Newbold, a professor of geography at McMaster University, said there are two big drivers of population growth in Hamilton. 

"One is international migration, so people coming to Hamilton from outside of Canada, and Hamilton has long been a relatively important place for immigrant settlement," Newbold told CBC News. 

"The other piece is that internal movement, and we've certainly, over the course of the pandemic, seen movement out of the big cities like Toronto and into smaller places like Hamilton." 

Hamilton's proximity to Toronto and accessibility between both places are among the top reasons why people are choosing the city, Newbold said.

"Part of it is sort of a push down the Queen Elizabeth Way out of Toronto [where people are] able to find housing in the city," Newbold said. 

"Hamilton [also] has great links into downtown Toronto with GO Transit, for example. So, that makes it a really accessible community."

While Hamilton's population growth is "in part driven by the pandemic," it started before 2020, Newbold said. 

"You know, people in Toronto or the broader Toronto area of the GTA saw Hamilton as a good place to be, so it had already started to drive that population growth," he said. 

Julie Smith and her partner, Megan Ardiel, first moved from Toronto to Mississauga before moving to Hamilton last summer.

Smith said the cost of housing was one of their primary reasons for moving to Hamilton.

"The housing costs are so wild in the GTA that you could not afford anything," Smith told CBC News. "Even small little condos were so expensive."