Brampton ranked fastest-growing city in Canada

Brampton has been ranked the fastest-growing urban centre in the country, with Oakville not too far behind.

According to the 2021 census, Brampton’s population grew by 10.6 per cent over the last five years and had the highest rate of growth out of Canada’s 25 largest municipalities.

Oakville was ranked second with a population increase of 10.3 per cent, with Kitchener and London coming in third and fourth at 10.1 and 10 per cent respectively.

Neighbouring Mississauga saw a slight decrease in overall population between 2016 and 2021 with a loss of 0.5 per cent and a population of 717,961.

Of the 25 largest municipalities on the Statistics Canada list, Mississauga came in last for population growth.

Data from Statistics Canada shows Brampton’s population grew from 593,638 residents in 2016 to 656,480 in 2021.

While Brampton topped the list of large municipalities for growth over the last five years, that percentage increase was less than the 13.3 per cent growth seen in the city between 2011 and 2016.

As of 2021, there were 27 municipalities in Canada with more than 200,000 residents. The largest 25 municipalities have a combined population of over 16 million people, representing 44.1 per cent of the country’s total population.

The numbers showed 18 of those 25 largest municipalities grew at a faster pace than the country as a whole from 2016 to 2021, which Statistics Canada says is an indication that Canada is becoming more urban.

While most large cities saw a larger than average increase, Canada’s two largest municipalities of Toronto and Montréal grew at a slower pace than Canada overall at 2.3 per cent and 3.4 per cent.

Statistics Canada said Brampton’s growth between 2016 and 2021 shows a trend of the population in peripheral municipalities increasing faster than central municipalities.

At 73.7 per cent, nearly three in four Canadians live in one of Canada’s large urban centres in 2021, up from 73.2 per cent five years earlier.

Downtowns in Canada are growing fast, and more rapidly than before according to Statistics Canada.

From 2016 to 2021, the downtown populations of the large urban centres grew faster than the urban centres as a whole. The populations of downtowns also grew at over twice the pace compared with the previous census cycle at 4.6 per cent.

Overall, suburbs farthest from downtowns were generally growing at a faster pace at 8.8 per cent than the urban fringe at 3.7 per cent and suburbs closer to downtowns grew at a rate of 5.8 per cent.