Hospital birth data suggests increase in birth tourism, says immigration expert
2025/12/19 2 Comments
Globe coverage of my policy options article:
Births in Canada to foreign visitors and other non-residents have risen in the past year, an expert in immigration statistics has found after analyzing hospital data.
The research, published in a report on Wednesday, shows a small increase in births at Canadian hospitals to temporary residents, such as international students and people here on work permits.
The proportion of births to people who are not settled in Canada is small compared with births in the country overall, but the number of temporary residents in Canada has been dropping as the federal government has reduced immigration.
According to the report, authored by Andrew Griffith, a former director-general at the federal immigration department, the data suggest an uptick in births to women here on visitor visas, otherwise known as birth tourism. …
Source: Hospital birth data suggests increase in birth tourism, says immigration expert, Policy Options Birthright citizenship and the politics of “birth tourism”
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Multicultural Meanderings 
Interesting analysis in Policy Options. Did you do any statistical tests to show whether the trend has broken? How far back do these data go?
I started tracking the data in 2010-11. StatsCan was able to go back to 2007-8. The one test I did was during the pandemic (natural experiment!) where the numbers fell dramatically as did visitor visas. StatsCan/IRCC use the same methodology but with greater precision as they are able to link CIHI and immigration data.