Interprovincial Migration in Canada: Implications for Output and Productivity Growth, 1987-2014

There were slightly more than 300,000 interprovincial migrants in Canada in 2014, representing 0.85 per cent of the population. Interprovincial migration provides significant economic benefits by reallocating labour from low-productivity regions with high unemployment to high productivity regions with low unemployment. A previous report released by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards estimated the impact of net interprovincial migration on aggregate output and productivity between 1987 and 2006. This study uses the same basic methodology to provide updated estimates, which is extended to estimate the long-term effects. We estimate that interprovincial migration raised GDP by $1.23 billion (chained 2007 dollars) in 2014, or 0.071 per cent of GDP. This may seem like a small amount, but migration flows are often persistent. We estimate that cumulative net migration flows over the 1987-2014 period increased GDP by $15.8 billion dollars (0.9 per cent of GDP) in 2014 and generated cumulative benefits of $146 billion over the 1987-2014 period. Most of these gains can be attributed to migration to Alberta and British Columbia, which are by far the largest destinations of net interprovincial migration.