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Across Canada, CIHI hospital discharge data shows there were 4,099 births to non-residents in 2018/19 (excluding Quebec), compared to 3,628 the year before. While the number has been increasing every year for the past decade at least, non-resident births still account for only about two per cent of all births in Canada.

However, at Richmond Hospital last year, they accounted for 23.1 per cent of all births and at St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver, they accounted for 10.3 per cent of all births.

Andrew Griffith, a fellow at the Environics Institute and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said 454 non-resident women delivered babies at Richmond Hospital in 2018/19 and 139 women gave birth at St. Paul’s Hospital. And the number of babies may even be higher than the number of women because some deliveries involve multiple babies.

Griffith noted that across Canada, non-resident births rose 13 per cent in the last fiscal year, a rate that is higher than both immigration and overall population increases. The number of non-resident births in B.C. rose 3.3 per cent overall; at St. Paul’s, they rose by 12.9 per cent from 2017/18 to 2018/19 and at Richmond Hospital, the increase was 5.6 per cent. At one hospital in Ontario, the increase was as much as 49 per cent.

Griffith said it is too early to say whether Ontario and Alberta are going to supplant B.C. as the favoured destinations for birth tourism.

“In general, I prefer to have two years of data before knowing whether this is a shift or simply a one-year anomaly. But it is significant I think that Richmond seems to have stabilized,” he said, adding that it has traditionally accounted for nearly three-quarters of all non-residents births in B.C. Indeed, there are numerous websites marketing services to Chinese women and dozens of birth houses in Richmond, catering to the needs of women coming here to have their babies.

An Angus Reid poll done early this year showed that 64 per cent of Canadians were opposed to granting automatic Canadian citizenship to babies born to birth tourists and an almost equal proportion wanted to see laws changed.

pfayerman@postmedia.com

Twitter: @MedicineMatters