A record number of people are leaving Ontario. Where are they going ? And why are they leaving ?

“Leave Ontario’ has been the traditional advice for prospective homebuyers frustrated by the province’s unaffordable housing market. In 2021 alone, nearly 108,000 Ontarians took that well-worn nugget to heart—a number not seen since the early 1980s.

Newly released data shows that the outflow continued into the second quarter of this year, when another 49,000 people packed up and moved to another province. Because of this, the province had its highest quarterly net loss of people migrating to other provinces since 1971.

What happened to them all? Statistics Canada says that about a quarter of the people who moved from Ontario to another province went to Alberta. " Alberta is calling" ...Through radio ads it’s enticing people like you to consider moving where homes are cheaper, taxes are lower and commutes are shorter. The reason: Alberta is experiencing a shortage of skilled tradespeople. Another quarter went to the Maritimes, Newfoundland, and Labrador, with Nova Scotia getting most of the newcomers.

For the first time in its history, Quebec took in more people from Ontario than it sent back to Ontario. And British Columbia welcomed its largest number of Ontario arrivals since the early 1990s.

Most people who move between provinces go to Alberta and the Maritimes. In Alberta, an influx of people from Ontario has been the norm, not the rare case. in the 1980s, the oil boom and the last big one, which ended in 2010, caused many Canadians to move to Alberta and Saskatchewan to find work. Ontarians are moving out West in large part today because they want to live in places with cheaper housing. there is no land transfer tax on homes. and "Housing is much cheaper everywhere in Alberta than it is in Toronto or some of the other big cities in the east."

According to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), the average home price in Alberta is only $425,000 while the average home price in Ontario was $850,000. But the cost of housing isn't the only reason why so many people in Ontario left their home province. but the agility for ontarions to work remotely has played a huge role in their move.

Nova Scotia also has the same thing going for them . Nova Scotia and New Brunswick both saw their largest net gains from people moving between provinces since 1971 in the second quarter.

Nova Scotia's housing market one of the fastest growing in Canada. Even though interest rates are going up and the economy is getting worse, home prices have stayed strong in this province.

In 2022, the housing market in Alberta also grew a lot. Calgary saw it’s highest home price in 2014 and then continued on downhill decline. Just recently has Alberta recovered and prices are back where they were in 2014. According to a recent Scotiabank report, it estimated that net losses of 31,000 Ontarians every year—from both inter-provincial migration and immigration—would slow down the economy by a mere 0.02% over two years.