Toronto was Canada’s most populous municipality in the 2021 census. The City of Toronto recorded 2,794,356 residents, more than any other Canadian municipality.
The modern municipality was created in 1998 when the former municipalities of Toronto, North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, York and East York were amalgamated. That boundary matters: population rankings compare municipalities as officially defined, not just historic downtown Toronto.
Toronto is also the core of a much larger urban region. The Toronto census metropolitan area had 6,202,225 residents in 2021, including surrounding municipalities such as Mississauga, Brampton, Markham and Vaughan. The metropolitan figure should not be substituted for the city’s municipal count.
Toronto’s municipal population grew from 2,731,571 in 2016 to 2,794,356 in 2021. It is also Canada’s largest city by population and one of the country’s principal economic, cultural and immigration centres.