Charting Population in Canada

A couple months ago, some population statistics popped up (Everyone knows rural Canada’s population is tanking. Except it’s not. | Contrarian) in an interesting graph:

However, the raw numbers of rural Canadians is actually increasing:

“Canada’s rural population has been rising quite steadily since 1851. True, the increase has levelled off over the last two decades, but so has the decline in our share of Canada’s total population…our influence and political power? That has indeed been falling. Which may be why urban statisticians could publish such a misleading chart.” – Parker Donham

This new chart, however, does not explain the struggling political influence and diminishing power of rural Canada compared to urban Canada. Zoom out a little, without truncating the axis or omitting data sets, and you can see what is actually going on:

Originally published at boostventilator.wordpress.com on September 2, 2014.