By raw population growth, Surrey was the leader, with 191,500 more residents in the past year.
The fastest-growing municipality with more than 20,000 people in B.C. over the last decade? Langford, a suburb of Victoria, which grew almost 70 per cent.
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But that’s the fastest growth in terms of percentage. By raw population growth, Surrey was the leader, with 191,500 more residents. Surrey grew 34 per cent in the past 10 years, to 700,459 people as of July 1, 2024.
Vancouver remains B.C.’s most-populous city, but Surrey is nipping at its heels.
Vancouver’s population is 756,008, after adding 23,790 people in 2023-24. Surrey is growing more quickly, adding 44,799 people in 2023-24.
If the pace continues, Surrey could have a larger population than Vancouver by 2027.
Andy Yan is the director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. He put the StatsCan data into a chart that showed growth over the last 10 years in B.C. and across Canada.
The Vancouver CMA is the same as Metro Vancouver, 23 cities and municipalities up to Langley and Maple Ridge in the east, Lions Bay to the northwest and the U.S. border to the south. According to Yan’s chart, the District of Langley led Metro Vancouver in growth by percentage, growing over 40 per cent, from 115,782 in 2014 to 162,269 in 2024.
In raw numbers, Burnaby had larger growth, adding 62,471 in the last decade, a 24.3 per cent increase. Burnaby’s population as of July 1, 2024 was 298,986.
Richmond grew by 42,525 to 242,966, a 19.5 per cent increase. Coquitlam grew by 36,378 to 174,248, just over 23 per cent. Abbotsford isn’t in the Vancouver CMA, but grew by 34,766 to 175,087, also just over 23 per cent.
Kelowna led population growth in the Okanagan, adding 41,523 residents to bring its population to 165,200, a 30.7 per cent increase in 10 years.
The overall population growth tends to be around the larger population centres: Metro Vancouver, the Victoria CMA, the Abbotsford-Mission CMA, and the Okanagan.
Yan said the question is whether those places “are ready for growth or not.” The rapid growth in Surrey, for example, has led to some frustration.
“Attached to increasing housing is the social and physical infrastructure that is required to support that housing, and how it is, and isn’t, being delivered,” he said. “I think you could see frustration in terms of roads, in terms of schools and medical care (in Surrey).”
Surrey’s growth also isn’t just high-rise towers and single detached homes.
“It’s interesting to note that much of that housing growth is townhomes,” he said. “Homes that are pretty conducive toward having families or children. If anything, it talks about Surrey being the home of the ‘missing middle’. It also happens to be a home of the missing middle classes, middle and working classes.”
Statistics Canada has also officially confirmed what has been speculated for a year, that the population of Metro Vancouver has passed three million.
Metro Vancouver added 127,000 people between July 1, 2023 and July 1, 2024, when the population reached 3,108,941.
Stats Can does its reports on metropolitan areas annually, so can’t pinpoint the precise month Metro Vancouver passed three million.
But Sophia Foglia of StatsCan communications said the Metro population “was already less than 20,000 shy of three million in July 2023,” so “it is probable that three million was reached sometime between the third and fourth quarter of 2023.”
StatsCan said the Victoria CMA has 441,491 residents, the Kelowna CMA has 251,756, the Abbotsford-Mission CMA has 220,786, the Nanaimo CMA has 128,371, the Kamloops CMA has 128,233, and the Chilliwack CMA has 126,850.
There are 41,288,599 people in Canada, and 30,893,239 are in the country’s 43 census metropolitan areas. That’s 74.8 per cent of the Canadian population.
According to Yan’s chart, Langford is the second-fastest growing municipality over 20,000 people in the country by percentage, behind only East Gwillimbury, Ont.
East Gwillimbury is 57 kms north of Canada’s biggest city, Toronto. The city of Toronto grew by 508,944 people in the past decade, for a July 1, 2024 population of 3,273,119.
The overall Toronto metropolitan area grew by a record 268,911 people in 2023-24, pushing its population to over seven million for the first time, to 7,106,379.
The Montreal CMA is 4,615,154, which means Metro Vancouver is the third-biggest metropolitan area in Canada by population.