Matt Spoke: If Canada wants more children, we need more marriage
Marriage should not be taken lightly, but waiting to feel “ready” can often mean waiting until it is too late.
Most Canadians do not need a Statistics Canada study to know that family life is being pushed later or deprioritised altogether. You can see it in the lives of people in their twenties and thirties. They move out later, date less, marry later or not at all, buy homes later, and have children later if they have them at all. Each delay has its own explanation, and most are reasonable enough. Housing is expensive, education takes longer than it used to, stable work can be harder to find, and many young adults have absorbed the message that they should become fully independent before they make any permanent commitment to someone else.
The trouble is that, when all of these delays are added together, they amount to something more serious than a series of individual life choices.
The fertility numbers are stark. In 2024, Canada’s fertility rate fell to 1.25 children per woman, the lowest ever recorded in this country and well below the replacement level of roughly 2.1. Statistics Canada now puts Canada in the category of “ultra-low fertility”, generally used for countries below 1.30 children per woman.
This is not a universal problem in the same way. Yes, fertility rates are declining in most of the world, with the decline most pronounced in Western countries. But Canada is uniquely challenged on this front. As a close comparison, the U.S. fertility rate is also below replacement, at about 1.6 children per woman in 2024, but that is still materially higher than Canada’s. The point is not that Americans have solved the problem, but that the comparison matters because it suggests that something particular is happening here.
The usual response is to talk about fertility as an economic problem, which is partly true. A country with too few children eventually has too few workers, too few taxpayers, too many ageing dependants, and too much pressure on health care, pensions, and public finances. But a low birth rate should not be seen as simply a fiscal warning light; it is a signal of a deeper cultural challenge. Children are not simply future contributors to GDP; they are evidence that people believe their communities and their country are worth building and carrying forward.
Although this is not typically how it’s framed, Canada’s fertility crisis should be seen as a family formation crisis, and that starts with marriage. That claim has become awkward to make, but it should not be. Marriage matters, both in relation to fertility and more generally. It is not just a ceremony, a legal arrangement, or one lifestyle choice among many. Marriage is the central institution through which two adults turn their private love into a public commitment. It turns romance into responsibility and, most importantly, leads to children. Marriage creates households and gives children a stable place to thrive.