The Missing Middle Podcast
Welcome to the Missing Middle, a podcast about why the middle class in Canada is disappearing. We hope to help you understand why life is becoming unaffordable for so many in this country, and what can be done to reverse course.
The Missing Middle Podcast
Why Return-to-Office Didn't Bring Canadians Back to Big Cities
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Why are so many young Canadian families leaving Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal? Even after return-to-office mandates, the exodus from Canada's largest cities continues.
In this episode of Classonomics, Mike Moffatt and Sabrina Maddeaux explore the data behind Canada's urban migration trends and debate why affordability isn't the only factor driving people away. They discuss housing costs, crime and public safety, mental health, community, urban planning, and whether government policies are making sprawl even worse.
Topics covered:
- Why Canadians are leaving the GTA, Metro Vancouver, and Montreal
- Why return-to-office hasn't reversed the trend
- Housing affordability and the shortage of family-sized homes
- Crime, public safety, and quality of life in big cities
- Mental health, community, and life satisfaction
- Urban growth boundaries, the Greenbelt, and sprawl
- Why smaller cities are attracting young families
- What policymakers are getting wrong about housing and urban planning
Subscribe for more conversations on housing, economics, public policy, and the future of Canada.
Chapters:
00:00 The Great Canadian Family Exodus
01:05 Mike's Biggest Prediction Miss
03:05 Why Millennials Are Leaving Cities
04:17 Is Toronto Becoming Too Chaotic?
06:22 Does Crime Make Families Move?
09:44 Are Small Towns Better for Mental Health?
11:57 Why Community Matters More Than Ever
14:32 It All Comes Back to Housing
15:35 The Greenbelt's Unintended Consequences
17:29 When Good Environmental Policy Goes Wrong
18:40 The Case for Evidence-Based Policy
Research/links:
Housing is a large part of the story. The OECD has examined this:
As has Statistics Canada: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/241119/dq241119b-eng.htm
Remote Work and Employment Dynamics under COVID-19: Evidence from Canada
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7971424/
Upjohn Institute: https://www.upjohn.org/remote-works-quiet-impact-rural-communities
C.D. Howe: https://cdhowe.org/publication/settling-new-normal-working-home-across-canada/
Social ties and quality of life, including lower rates of depression: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2025002/article/00003-eng.htm
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20376426/
Though evidence is nuanced: https://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/17/E889
Crime and disorder:
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2025001/article/00005-eng.htm
McDonald-Laurier Report: https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Urban-Violent-Crime-Report_Final.pdf
Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux
Produced by Meredith Martin
Funded by the Neptis Foundation https://neptis.org/
The other week, open hard drug use on the streetcar I was coming home on, and a woman who then decided to pee on the streetcar floor.
SPEAKER_00These are the things you must support to, you know, stay in the environmental club. Uh, and if you don't, then obviously you you hate Mother Nature. You you you hate the planet.
SPEAKER_01Classonomics, hosted by Sabrina Mado and Mike Moffat.
SPEAKER_02Canadians are continuing to move out of the GTA, Metro Vancouver, and Montreal at near record numbers. Now, a lot of people thought that return to office mandates would reverse this trend, but it's barely made a dent. And it's not older people cashing out of their expensive urban homes and moving to cottage country either. Over two-thirds of the domestic population loss is under the age of 45. So today we look at why, from housing prices to mental health. Mike, you've been known to make a lot of predictions. Some you've been right about, and some not so much. Now, one that you didn't exactly nail is how much the end of the pandemic and the push to have workers return to office would impact the exodus of families out of Canada's largest cities. Can you walk us through what's happening and why you were so wrong?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so yeah, I'm happy to walk you through why I was wrong. So uh time for one of Professor Mike's uh patented history lessons. You know, at some moment we've always had a net migration out of our big metros. So in the first decade of the 2000s, the metro areas of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver collectively tended to lose on net about 37,000 people to the rest of the country each year. So what that means is like 37,000 more people would leave the GTA or Vancouver, Montreal, and move to Edmonton or Tilsonburg or somewhere else in Canada than move in the opposite direction, actually move to one of the big metros. And I want to be clear when we say Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, like I'm talking about their metro areas. So like Toronto includes Oakville and Markham, Vancouver includes Surrey and Burnaby, Montreal includes Laval, and so on. So it's not just the core city.
SPEAKER_02And to be clear, this out migration doesn't mean that the GTA's population was actually falling, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, correct. So this is just looking at domestic migration. So, you know, the number of people moving out of one community in Canada to another community in Canada. So if we kind of fast forward, in the first half of the 2010s, this trend picked up in an increase from about 37,000 to 45,000, but it really took off around 2015 or so. It doubled to about 70,000 people before the pandemic. And then during the pandemic, it doubled again, you know, because of work from home and some of those other things that we described. It peaked at about 158 K. It's cooled off since then, but it's still, you know, near 130,000 uh last year. So this is where I got it wrong because I had thought that once the pandemic was over and companies would try to get people back in the office, which they have with some success, we'd go back to being in that kind of 60,000, 70,000 range, or perhaps even lower just as people move back into the GTA. I totally got that one wrong. We're still way above where we were before the pandemic, and it doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon.
SPEAKER_02And it's not just retirees selling their multimillion dollar homes in, let's say, Cabbage Town and moving to Muskoka.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's not just retirees know, though, like we do see some of that in the data. That that is a real phenomenon that the uh occurs, and you talk to realtors out in uh cottage country, and they'll tell you that this is happening. But over two-thirds of the net leavers are under the age of 45. So if we break it down by five-year age category, the most common leavers in Toronto and Vancouver are folks in their early 30s, and Montreal is folks in their late 20s. So this is like early career professionals, which is kind of strange when you think about it. Like these are people who are starting their careers and they're choosing to move away from Canada's most economically dynamic cities. And you know, housing costs are obviously a big part of that story. And I but I'm a housing guy, so I tend to see everything as a housing problem. Like there's the old saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, like everything looks like a nail. So I thought it might be helpful to discuss reasons besides housing costs why young families are moving to other communities. One is something that you've written about quite a bit, and it's the perception of crime and disorder. We had an episode on this a while back. We'll we'll link to that in the show notes. But I'd love to get your view. How much do you think perceptions of crime and disorder are playing out in people, you know, leaving the GTA and moving to other communities?
SPEAKER_02It's a big one. I think affordability is still the key factor, but there are also social factors. And one of those is just not the perception, but the reality of crime and disorder and chaos in our cities that has really increased over the last five, 10 years. I mean, I see it every day. And it's not just, you know, in one neighborhood or another neighborhood. It's really across the board at this point. You have, you know, the major things that you see on the news, like car thefts and break-ins, which are happening more and more frequently. Everyone knows multiple people this has happened to. But even when you take a streetcar to work or from work, as I do every day, more often than not, there's some sort of altercation, open hard drug use. The other week, open hard drug use on the streetcar I was coming home on, and a woman who then decided to pee on the streetcar floor multiple times. You know, people yelling at other passengers, kicking things. Often I take the streetcar home, and this is a regular occurrence, not a one-off, by the way, where someone who is either having a severe mental health episode or clearly using hard drugs now owns the back third of the streetcar. And everyone else on that streetcar is so scared and uncomfortable that they're crammed up like sardines, even though there should be more than enough space on the front two-thirds. And there's really no enforcement, no solution to any of this. And I hear a lot as well about women getting off the streetcar early because they're scared again. I mean, imagine being in that environment alone late at night, coming back from a shift, and then you throw kids into the equation. Uh, I don't think really anyone ideally wants to raise a kid in an environment like that. And parents and prospective parents are rightfully scared. So all of this does contribute to people saying, hey, I've had enough. I'm going to move somewhere where I feel I can have more control and more safety as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I can see that. I am I'm someone who quite likes transit, but I know you know there have been times where I've been hesitant uh to take my daughter with me on transit because of some of the stuff I've seen. And in some cases when she was younger, she's seen. I think it's one of the reasons why we moved to a walkable neighborhood, so we actually didn't have to use transit uh as much. And there is a fair bit of research out of the the US on some of these topics that show there is a linkage between migration decisions and and crime. So, you know, there is uh evidence to show that the people do kind of act in the way that uh you describe, uh, but there's some complexity here. So a few notes like like first, that if you're a homeowner that's the direct victim of a violent crime, you are far more likely to sell your home and move somewhere else than you know the kind of general population. Though it's not necessarily that you're moving out out of the metro, right? You might just be changing neighborhoods or you know, moving out of, say, the city of Toronto to a smaller community still within the GTA. But that that does happen. So there is a direct linkage between experience and migration patterns. Now, secondly, if you we look for non-victims, or at least ones that haven't been directly affected by violent crime, like they still may have witnessed or whatever, but they weren't directly victimized. We do find that that it's it is the perception of crime that matters more for moving decisions than the actual crime numbers. But you know, sometimes those are aligned and sometimes they're they're not. And you know, you mentioned kids and I I mentioned experiences with my daughter. The data shows this out that the families with young children are far more sensitive to perceptions of crime and where to live than people without younger children. But again, it seems to more affect their choice of neighborhoods uh and and maybe which municipality to live in than the choice of metro. So there is uh a linkage uh in the data, but it's it's kind of complicated.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, of course. And that makes sense to me as well, because ultimately people are tied to wanting to be near their social networks, right? They they have jobs, and with return to office, there's only so far they can move without having to switch jobs. So they're going to try to find the safest, most affordable area they can within that metro. But it's becoming more and more difficult to do so. So I could see people starting to consider even bigger moves.
SPEAKER_00I think you're right. Um, you know, if we bring this to Canada, you know, we don't have as much direct research, right? So we're kind of looking at correlations and things like that. But I suspect there is a crime migration uh linkage, but it is hard to support with data. So there is a uh recent McDonnell Laurier report on urban crime. Once again, we'll link to that uh in the show notes, but which shows that urban crime is on the rise. But interestingly, it highlights how violent crime is particularly high in Edmonton. And ironically, Edmonton is the metro area that Canadians are most likely to move to, not from. Now, again, there's that distinction between actual crime data and perceptions, but I don't think anybody really perceives Edmonton as a particularly safe city. So it's not all clear-cut. And I I think at a some level it probably shows that while perception of uh crime and disorder are important, you know, other factors play a role. Now, there is a related topic that is a little bit leaner when it comes to migration, and that's mental health. And we actually see families who are disproportionately moving to smaller communities. When researchers conduct surveys of these smaller communities and so on, um, they're finding that in those communities, anxiety and depression levels are lower and reported mental health is higher. So, you know, this is mostly kind of correlation, not causation about this causing the move. But I do find it interesting that the data suggests that people are moving from communities that have higher levels of anxiety and depression to communities that that have lower levels of anxiety and depression.
SPEAKER_02Right. And that totally makes sense. I don't think people are actively saying, okay, I'm looking for a community where people are less anxious or less depressed, or even would know how to find out that information. But what I could see that correlating with is if you have a smaller community where there are tighter social networks, more support, more social trust, less unpredictability and precarity in terms of having to get up and move. And will you be in the same home next year? Affordability may not be as much of a concern. So all those things add up to lessen the mental health strain. So that's where I would see that um being correlated more than people choosing to actually move somewhere because of better mental health of the community. But I think that all the things that contribute to that better mental health are factors that draw them there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would agree with all that. Like I get, you know, I think I think I might be the only person in the universe who might like download an Excel sheet and go, okay, I want to move to a community with low levels of depression. So, you know, let me uh let me get at the spreadsheet. But you know, I do think there is something to, you know, at a kind of subconscious level where you visit one of these communities and go, oh, well, though this is nice and everybody kind of seems happy, you know, maybe I'll move here. And there's this fascinating uh study from Statistics Canada from a couple years ago, which we'll also link to in the show notes. I don't know how many times I've said that in this episode. Our show notes are going to be really long here, but but that's okay. Anyhow, this study notes that the people who live in smaller communities report higher levels of life satisfaction and sense of belonging to community. So exactly what you said, that it is that sort of you know feeling of belonging. Here's where it gets really interesting, though. It's not just the size of the community, but it's actually the size of the metro. So if you are again in the GTA and you move to kind of a commuter suburb in the GTA, uh your reported levels of mental health and life satisfaction are the same as if you live in the city of Toronto, right? So it it kind of bleeds together. That really, if you want those higher levels of life satisfaction and depression, you have to move to a smaller community that's kind of outside of a metro, that is more, I don't want to say isolated, but uh kind of uh self-contained, right? Which kind of makes sense from um yeah, that connection thing, because you know, if you live in a smaller community where where people actually work in the community, they're they're probably a little bit more connected with each other rather than going, okay, I, you know, I live in this town, but every day I'm I'm driving to Toronto to work. Love to get your take on that.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense to me. I mean, all the issues that used to be more concentrated to urban cores or downtown have spread out, right? So affordability being a big one, but also crime, um, people having to move outside of their communities, everything from congestion and commute times. So you do have to go further and further to escape those factors if you want to live in a place where those stressors aren't impacting you or your neighbors as much, and you have that stability. I think stability and control are really big for people, especially when we're in a world that is so uncertain and you know, the headlines change every 30 minutes, and it's very stressful, which makes those factors even more important psychologically, I would think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I would completely agree with it. I think people are looking for that for that uh sense of control, that that sense of community. And I think you see though, like you know, we've seen uh, you know, stories around uh carjackings in the GTA, and many of those have been in smaller communities in the GTA. So uh, you know, I I do think it's important to look that at that at the metro level and say, okay, you know, if I really want kind of the small town life, you know, I'm going to have to move out to uh Godridge or somewhere, I don't know, bigger community, but somewhere that does not within a commuting distance of a place with an NHL team.
SPEAKER_02There's a lot at play, but at the end of the day, so much of it does come down to housing and affordability, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it really does. So I I, you know, I I really do think being uh a housing guy is important here, that it's not just my imagination. And, you know, particularly not just uh how house prices and rents at kind of high level, but specifically prices and to a lesser extent rents of family-sized homes. And, you know, I've always long suspected it was the case, but I'm increasingly becoming convinced that all the well-intentioned sprawl prevention policies governments have put in in the last 20 years, such as like urban growth boundaries and so on, have actually made sprawl worse. Uh because we we've gotten to the point where governments have made living at the edge of the GTA so expensive and challenging. So instead of you know, kind of staying within the metro, they're moving to a Brantford or St. Mary's or so on and driving into Toronto each day for work. So you get sprawl on steroids. And I don't think it's a coincidence that this really started to pick up at a time where you know we had the introduction of green belts. We we started having tight urban growth boundaries, right? So I think the timing here, again, correlation is not causation, but I think the timing here is suggestive of part of what's going on is we've made it so difficult to create family-friendly homes in our metros that the people are moving to these smaller communities. And interesting, like I often hear urbanists like Kitchener Waterloo as a success case for preventing sprawl because they've uh you know they do a lot on infill and they do a lot of good things. Uh, you know, they have tight urban growth boundaries and so on. But interestingly, the the KW metro area actually saw net out migration to the rest of Canada, and that's actually really unusual for a non-Tronal Metro. Like Ottawa, Oshawa, St. Catharines, Niagara, Hamilton, Barrie, London, Woodstock, they're all gaining families, but KW is losing them. So, you know, at some point, I gotta think about it. Like, policymakers have to understand that the best way to fight sprawl isn't by like arbitrarily drawing lines on a map and saying, okay, you can't uh you can't build past this point, but it's by actually allowing family-sized homes to be built in our cities. I think they have to reach a conclusion at some point, or like, am I just being naive here?
SPEAKER_02Unfortunately, I think it might take longer than we'd like and longer than logic would dictate. Uh, we are seeing that conversation happening more with, for example, the green belt, but there's still so much backlash, especially from older voters who turn out in bigger numbers, who show up at meetings and contact politicians who are comfortably housed and don't understand the dynamics here. And it's not in their interest to understand the dynamics a lot of the time. So until younger people especially say, hey, this needs to change, and they're loud about it, and they turn out and vote and make it clear that these policies are connected to getting and staying elected, I think we might be waiting a while.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and what I'm uh afraid of, because I also would put environmentalists in in this bucket, of which I'm one, that uh, you know, and I I'm the guy that gave uh the Kearney government an F on environmental policy, which you a lot of you wrote about in the comments. Uh, and if you want to comment again, you know, please feel free to do so uh on this episode. But overall, like I think that these things have become more about symbols than policies, right? That we don't actually see whether or not these policies have been effective at all. But you know, what it means to be a good environmentalist is that you support tight urban growth boundaries and not say, okay, well, does the data actually show that this is helpful or is it doing more harm than it than good? And I'm afraid we've gotten to that point in in policy where it's all about I hate the term virtue signaling, but kind of is virtue signaling and going, okay, this is these are the things you must support to you know stay in the environmental club. Uh, and if you don't, then obviously you you hate Mother Nature, you, you, you hate the planet, and and so on. And I just wish we could get to a point where we had more evidence-based policy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and a willingness to reevaluate or admit you are wrong. I do think this is a problem across the board that a lot of and largely well-intentioned activists in different spaces and advocacy groups are still functioning and pushing forward the same ideas that they had five, 10, 20 years ago that clearly don't match up with reality. And there has to be a willingness to reevaluate those and also have honest conversations about trade-offs if we're going to end up in a place with policies that actually achieve the goals that I think we're all trying to work towards.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I could not agree more.
SPEAKER_02Thank you everyone for watching and listening into our producer, Meredith Martin, and editor Sean Foreman.
SPEAKER_00And if you have any thoughts or questions about Godrich or other communities on Lake Huron that Letter Kenny might be based on, please send us an email to missing middle podcast at gmail.com.
SPEAKER_02And we'll see you next time.
