{"id":269949,"date":"2021-12-16T05:01:49","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T10:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/birth-tourism-in-canada-dropped-sharply-once-the-pandemic-began\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T23:46:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T03:46:32","slug":"birth-tourism-in-canada-dropped-sharply-once-the-pandemic-began","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2021\/12\/birth-tourism-in-canada-dropped-sharply-once-the-pandemic-began\/","title":{"rendered":"Birth tourism in Canada dropped sharply once the pandemic began"},"content":{"rendered":"

The COVID-19 pandemic provides a perfect natural experiment to assess the extent of birth tourism in Canada now that we have 2020-21 hospital delivery data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information<\/a> (CIHI).<\/p>\n

The latest data respond to questions regarding the accuracy of CIHI data<\/a> in assessing the extent of birth tourism<\/a> following my initial analysis<\/a> in 2018 in Policy Options<\/em>, given the correlation between visitor visa data and the sharp drop in birth tourism. Moreover, given the cost of coming to Canada for the purpose of giving birth, they also demonstrate that the nonresident women who give birth are largely the economically privileged rather than the more economically vulnerable.<\/p>\n

The 2020-21 data show that \u201cnonresident self-pay\u201d births declined by 57 per cent compared with the previous year, from 5,698 to 2,433 for all provinces, including Quebec. While this category is broader than that of women who arrive on visitor visas, visitor visas issued declined by 95 per cent, compared with the proportion of international students, which declined by only 25 per cent (most provincial health plans cover international students), or temporary workers, which actually increased by 5.5 per cent. As Canadian citizens and permanent residents were largely exempt from COVID travel restrictions, the number who chose to return to Canada to give birth is likely unchanged.<\/p>\n

Figure 1 contrasts the steady rise in nonresident self-pay births over the past 10 years and the sharp drop in 2020-21 back to 2010-11 levels. The percentage of nonresident births fell from 1.6 per cent of total births in 2019 to 0.7 per cent in 2020.<\/p>\n