Canada’s emigration and affordability pressures are real. But an August Rebel News clip is circulating with an earlier departure figure, a stronger claim of counting precision than Statistics Canada supports, and demographic evidence from different years. A newly released official table changes the headline number.
September 23 data update: 111,572, not the earlier 120,640
Adding the four calendar-2025 quarters in Statistics Canada table 17-10-0040-01, released September 23, 2026, gives an estimated 111,572 emigrants. The clip says 120,640. That earlier figure also appears in Rebel’s August 7 article by Tamara Ugolini and other contemporaneous reporting; it is not the total reproduced by the current official download.
We did not recover the archived official table cells that originally yielded 120,640, so this is not a finding that the August video invented its number. It is a warning not to present that number as today’s estimate.
Departures, returns and net emigration are different
| Area and year | Emigrants | Returning emigrants | Net emigration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canada, 2024 | 109,535 | 49,186 | 60,349 |
| Canada, 2025 | 111,572 | 50,064 | 61,508 |
| B.C., 2025 | 24,184 | 9,279 | 14,905 |
For these periods, net emigration is emigrants minus returning emigrants. The returnees are not necessarily the same people who left within that year. Neither the gross nor net emigration figure is the country’s total population change: immigration, births, deaths and changes in non-permanent residents also matter.
The current Canadian 2025 outward estimate is about 1.9% above 2024. It is below the current table’s 2023 total of 112,561, so the updated series does not support a calendar-2025 absolute record. A record number of departures would not automatically establish a record departure rate per resident, either.
The official definition includes Canadian citizens and permanent residents changing their usual residence to another country for either a long-term or short-term stay. It does not mean every person is a worker, Canadian-born, or gone permanently. Departing non-permanent residents are a separate statistical component.
An estimate—not a border-by-border “hard count”
The clip is right that administrative records matter. But calling the result a “hard count,” contrasted with a survey estimate, overstates its precision. Statistics Canada’s technical guide describes administrative inputs, coverage adjustments and models, and use of the Census Undercoverage Study for short-term emigration. It explicitly identifies emigration as one of the most difficult population components to estimate accurately.
The agency’s April 29, 2026 report on border entry-and-exit data also explains that Canada lacks a population register and uses alternative sources and demographic models. These are official estimates with documented methods—not mere opinion, but not a complete enumeration of every departure.
The younger, educated-emigrant concern has evidence—with a date attached
The relevant Statistics Canada portrait, published in March 2026, reports that 67.0% of emigrants in its 2021 profile were aged 20–44, and close to 70% had at least a university degree. That supports concern about retaining younger and educated people. It is not a measured age-and-education breakdown of the 2025 headline total.
An age profile, an occupational profile and an education profile are separate measurements. The national total cannot be relabelled as 111,572—or 120,640—working-age professionals. The figures also do not establish that housing, taxes or a particular government caused every departure.
The same portrait’s destination list is a different measure again: Canadian-born people living abroad in 2020, not the destinations of 2025 emigrants. Its leading countries are the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, followed by France. The clip’s ordering with New Zealand fourth was not verified as a current departure-flow ranking. A historical population living abroad and a year’s outward moves should not be silently interchanged.
Rents rose sharply, but not uniformly by 100%
The clip says rents in Toronto, Halifax, Vancouver and Kitchener roughly doubled in a decade. We checked comparable CMHC average-rent series published by Statistics Canada for apartment structures of three units or more, using 2015 and 2025.
| Area | 2015 | 2025 | Increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto | $1,288 | $2,046 | 58.9% |
| Halifax | $1,048 | $1,826 | 74.2% |
| Vancouver | $1,368 | $2,363 | 72.7% |
| Kitchener–Cambridge–Waterloo | $997 | $1,832 | 83.8% |
One-bedroom increases in those same series range from 59.7% to 84.9%. These are substantial pressures, although none is a literal doubling. They are primary-rental metropolitan averages, not city-proper asking rents, condominium rents, the experience of one unchanged tenant, or a constant-quality price index. The clip does not supply enough detail to verify a different ten-year series.
For new renters, the burden can be greater. Statistics Canada’s Q1 2026 asking-rent release put an advertised two-bedroom apartment in the Vancouver metropolitan area at C$3,100. That experimental listing-based estimate was down 2.2% year over year, but remained high. A recent decline does not erase affordability problems—and asking rents should not be mixed with occupied-unit averages.
The Vancouver–Seattle salary comparison needs matching definitions
The clip compares a Vancouver software engineer earning roughly C$130,000 with US$180,000 in Seattle. The Canadian number can be reproduced from Job Bank’s Lower Mainland–Southwest regional median of C$62.50 per hour, multiplied by an assumed 40 hours for 52 weeks. Job Bank’s reference period is 2023–2024, updated November 2025. That is an illustrative annualized median, not a verified Vancouver-city mean annual salary.
We did not verify a current, like-for-like official Seattle average of US$180,000. A sound comparison needs aligned occupation definitions, reference years, experience levels, mean versus median, geographic boundaries and whether stock awards or bonuses are included. Converting currencies would still not establish purchasing power or take-home income.
A household could be better off financially after moving, but a blanket lower-tax/lower-cost conclusion requires a real budget: federal and state or provincial taxes, payroll deductions, housing, health-insurance premiums and out-of-pocket care, benefits and family circumstances. No complete matched household calculation was established by the clip.
What B.C. and Ottawa should answer
The practical question is whether Canada can retain people who want to build their futures here. Publish clear departures-and-returns dashboards, reliable age and skill profiles, and evidence about why people leave. Examine housing and job-market competitiveness without treating every emigrant as an interchangeable worker—or treating immigration as a substitute for retention.
Bottom line: the video points to real affordability and retention issues. Its earlier headline number has been superseded in the current table; its “hard count” description is inaccurate; and its demographic, rent and wage comparisons need qualifications. The data do not settle individual motives or prove a single political explanation.
Earlier coverage and revision note
NewsForBC’s June 30 story quoted 30,092 emigrants for Q1 2026 and 120,916 for Q2 2025 through Q1 2026. The September 23 table now gives 26,114 and 111,852 for those same periods. Those older headline values and the unqualified record framing are replaced here. This is a transparent data-vintage update, not a claim that the earlier official table has been re-created. The original lead was Better Dwelling’s June 18 report, shared through BetterBC.
Sources: official migration CSV; official CMHC rent CSV; the technical guide, emigration portrait, Job Bank and rent release linked above. Full calculations, source limitations and capture details are in the evidence package below.
