BC Is Canada’s Eviction Capital, Here’s How Your Province Stacks Up

Canada is a country of movers, but apparently not everyone wants to move. Statistics Canada (Stat Can) data shows hundreds of thousands of households were forced to move in 2018. Canadian households forced to move were largely due to evictions and foreclosures.

Forced To Move, a.k.a. Evictions and Foreclosures

Today we’re looking at the number of people forced to move, across Canada. Forced could be by a landlord, bank, other financial institution, or the government. In other words, it’s the number of evictions and terminations that occurred in 2018. This is the first data available from Statistics Canada, so we can’t compare it over time. We can compare it to other provinces, and the national rate though. At least we’ll know which provinces are over and under represented.

The territories are included in our charts. Due to the low volume of households though, it’s not really fair to compare them to other provinces. For that reason, we excluded territories from the percent of household counts.

A LOT of People Are Forced To Move In Ontario

There were a lot of people that were evicted or foreclosed from their home last year. Canada saw 330,800 foreclosures in 2018, or about 2.2% of all households. Ontario had the bulk of forced moves, coming in with 127,600 in 2018, about 38.6% of the total. British Columbia followed with 81,200 forced moves, around 24.5% of the total. Quebec came in third with 61,400 forced moves, representing 18.6% of the total. B.C. has fewer households than Quebec, but a higher number of evictions.

Canadian Forced To Move By Landlord or Foreclosure

The number of households forced to move by a landlord, a bank or other financial institution or the government.

Source: Statistics Canada, Better Dwelling.

British Columbia Is Canada’s Eviction Capital

In terms of the number of households forced to move, B.C., P.E.I., and Ontario top the list. B.C. saw a massive 4.1% of households forced to move in 2018, that’s 86.4% higher than the national average. In a distant second was P.E.I. with 2.4% of households forced to move, 9.1% higher than the national number. Ontario came in third with 2.3% of households forced to move, about 4.5% higher than the national average. B.C.’s ratio is so high, it makes Ontario’s higher distribution seem almost reasonable – it’s not.

Percent of Canadian Households Forced

The percentage of households forced to move by a landlord, a bank or other financial institution or the government.

Source: Statistics Canada, Better Dwelling.

Keep in mind these are provincial numbers, and may be higher in urban areas. Expensive housing, high debt levels, and fast moving prices are typical causes for forced moves. Although we don’t want to discount the high ratio of forced moves in rural Canada these days. Lowered liquidity makes it much harder to dispose of assets or find a new job in these regions.

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