Posthaste: Canada's biggest city plummeted in this North American ranking

Once the fastest growing metro area in North America, Canada’s biggest city has sunk to No. 412 in the ranking in just one year.

The Centre for Urban Research and Development at Toronto Metropolitan University has been tracking population growth in Canada and the United States since 2020, and with the exception of the pandemic, Toronto has always come up number one — until 2025.

Last year Ontario’s capital fell near the bottom of the 435 metropolitan areas in the study, leaving Calgary and Edmonton as the only two Canadian cities in the top 10.

Montreal and Vancouver, which were 5th and 6th in 2024, also tumbled in the ranking to 25th and 92nd, respectively.

Houston and Dallas, Texas, took the top two spots.

Canada went through a historic population boom following the pandemic that pushed the country’s growth rate to a record-breaking 3.2 per cent, but then peaked in 2023.

Since then aggressive policy shifts by the federal government have cut the number of non-permanent residents and capped immigration to the extent that Canada’s population has declined over the past three quarters.

Population growth in the Greater Golden Horseshoe of which Toronto is the centre averaged 313,000 a year in the three years leading up to 2025, then slumped to 40,000.

But the federal crackdown is not the city’s only problem.

“At first glance, one might assume Toronto’s sharp drop in the rankings was driven by lower federal immigration targets. Not quite,” said the researchers, economist Diana Petramala and research fellow Frank Clayton.

Canada’s biggest city actually remains the top landing spot for newcomers to enter the country, followed by Montreal.

What is sapping its growth is a huge exodus of residents leaving for other parts of Canada.

In 2025, Toronto gained 53,000 residents from international shores, but lost 77,000 through domestic migration.

“As the region attracted newcomers from around the world at lower rates than in 2024, increasingly unaffordable housing appears to be pushing many residents to other parts of Canada,” said the researchers.

Edmonton and Calgary are destinations of choice, gaining 15,000 and 8,000 new residents respectively last year from within Canada.

No Canadian city made the top 10 for domestic migration in North America, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, was dominated by U.S. sunshine states — Florida, Arizona, Texas and the Carolinas.

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