Voyageur 133
Canada Got Smaller Again, and Ottawa Wants Roads to the Arctic.
News for residents of the “11th province”: Canadians abroad.
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Canada Got Smaller. Again.
Canada shrank by 55,025 people in the first three months of 2026. That is not a typo. Statistics Canada put the country at 41,417,056 people on April 1, down 0.1 percent from New Year's Day.
The main drag was a drop in non-permanent residents, down 117,879 in the quarter. Permanent immigration fell to 83,149 people. StatCan says the numbers are preliminary and could move when more complete data is available in September, so don’t bet the house on these numbers just yet.
Still, this is the backdrop to yesterday's digital-nomad story (Voyageur 132). Canada is not only arguing about immigration levels from inside the house. More Canadians are also deciding what life looks like from outside it. The population chart is beginning to show both halves of that conversation.
Read more: Statistics Canada / Financial Post
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A photo from the old country:
Ottawa Wants Roads to the Arctic
Ottawa is expected on Wednesday to start naming its first national-interest projects, and the first picks are roads most Canadians have never driven because they do not exist yet. Very Canadian. Very Arctic.
The Mackenzie Valley Highway would create an all-season route through the Northwest Territories toward Inuvik. The Grays Bay Road and Port would connect Nunavut's Kitikmeot region to the national highway system and a deep-water Arctic port. Both are part of the “Canada-is-building-the-North” file that now brings together a need for critical minerals, sovereignty, defence, and Indigenous issues.
The label is important because national-interest projects can get faster federal reviews under the Building Canada Act. For Canadians outside of the country, the work can reveal an indication of what Ottawa wants the country to look like from a distance. A little less branch plant, and a little more Arctic spine.
Read more: Global News / Cabin Radio