Canada’s Demographic Turning Point: The Silent Force Reshaping Our Economic Future

Why a 150-Year Fertility Decline Now Converges With an Aging Population, a Debt Super-cycle, and the Onset of Economic Winter 🇨🇦📉❄️

For years, we’ve debated interest rates, housing supply, fiscal policy, immigration, technological disruption, and market valuations. But beneath all of these forces lies a slow-moving structural shift that ultimately determines the trajectory of every advanced economy:

Demographics.

This inflection point warrants a closer look at what brought us here and what it means for the future.

The fertility chart from 1870 to 2024 makes one trend undeniable: Canada’s fertility rate has plummeted from 6.8 children per woman in 1871 to just 1.25 in 2024, one of the lowest in the OECD.

This is not cyclical, but a structural transformation.
It is a century-long structural transformation.

This shift has profound implications for Canada’s economic, financial, and social future.