Is Statistics Canada Actually Overcounting Canadians?

There may be tools we can use to fact check the official scorekeepers

As you might recall, Canadian banking analysts recently accused Statistics Canada of undercounting the country’s population. Specifically, they felt estimates of non-permanent resident totals missed nearly a million individuals who had remained in the country after their visas expired.

Given the pressures we’re experiencing on housing and public finances, it’s hugely important to at the very least have a good sense of how many of us there actually are. I don’t have access to any new spy satellite head counting technologies that’ll give me better numbers than the pros, but I might be able to find a useful economic proxy that could help us clear things up.

The other day, one of my sons directed my attention to how The Independent used food consumption statistics to claim that official UK population numbers aren’t even close to reality. I like the sound of that approach but the trick is finding the right proxy.

I first turned to household water consumption, figuring that, since we all need to drink, wash dishes, and take showers at roughly the same rates, water usage trends should accurately represent population changes. Well that didn’t end well. In fact, between 2009 and 2021 - years when everyone agrees the population rose - water consumption fell by more than 11 percent. Either Canadians are flushing the toilet less or we’ve been installing more efficient equipment. I’m kind of hoping it’s the latter.

Ok. So how about foods that are, for the most part, both produced and consumed domestically? (Remember: I’m trying to identify consumption patterns among people in Canada, so I want to avoid the complexities of international trade.)

Eggs would seem to fit our needs. The problem with eggs is that, between 2001 and 2024, disposition of eggs for home consumption dropped by nearly 50 percent. And eggs in shell per 100 layers through those years dropped by eight percent. On the other hand, Statistics Canada also reported that egg production between 2011 and 2021 increased from 645 million dozen to 848 million dozen.

What’s going on here? Perhaps traditional home consumption of shell eggs has decreased while overall egg consumption in Canada increased due to shifts towards the convenience of prepared foods. But either way, I don’t think eggs are a reliable answer to our question.

We could move up one generation above eggs and look at poultry. Between 2001 and 2023 total bird production grew steadily by 28 percent. During that time, Canada’s population grew by 33 percent. So even if poultry production is a reasonable proxy for population size, if anything, it would suggest that there are currently only 39.4 million people in Canada rather than Statistics Canada’s own figure of 41 million.

One more try.