Chilliwack was the second-fastest-growing metropolitan area in Canada between 2016 and 2021, adding 12.1% to its population, and the city expects to reach roughly 132,000 residents by the late 2030s. People are not moving east for no reason: the same money buys considerably more room here than anywhere closer to Vancouver.
Two things decide whether that trade works for you, and neither gets much attention in the usual write-ups. One is the commute, where the widening of Highway 1 does not reach Chilliwack and has no funded date to. The other is school capacity, where the district is running above 100% and a dozen sites are over their design limit. Both are covered properly below.
Where Chilliwack is, and who lives there
The city sits at the eastern end of the Lower Mainland, about 100 km up Highway 1 from downtown Vancouver, with the Fraser River to the north and the mountains close on three sides.
Population depends on which boundary you mean, which is worth getting straight because sources quote different numbers:
| Geography | Population | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| City of Chilliwack | 93,203 | 2021 census |
| City, including First Nations communities within city boundaries | ~107,800 | City of Chilliwack estimate, 2024 |
| Chilliwack census metropolitan area | 113,767 | 2021 census |
| City projection | ~132,000 | City of Chilliwack, for 2035–2040 |
Median age across the city is 40.8. The mix skews toward families and owners: 58% of dwellings are detached and 76% of households own rather than rent.
The commute, and the Highway 1 question
This is the section to read twice if you plan to work west of Abbotsford.
Highway 1 through the Fraser Valley is being widened in phases, and the programme is real and well funded. It is also not coming to Chilliwack soon. Committed construction currently stops well short of the city.
| Phase | Extent | Status as of Sept 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 202nd–216th St, Langley | Complete, 2020 |
| 2 | 216th–264th St | Under construction, $345M |
| 3A | 264th St–Mount Lehman Rd | Under construction, $2.34B, completion targeted 2029 |
| 3B | Mount Lehman Rd–Highway 11 | Funded, $2.65B, completion targeted 2031 |
| 4 | Highway 11–Sumas Prairie | Integrated planning, not funded for construction |
Source: BC Ministry of Transportation and Transit, page updated 7 August 2026.
Read the last row again. The segment that would actually reach Chilliwack sits in planning with no construction funding, and no phase covers the Chilliwack side of Sumas Prairie at all. Local reporting in 2024 put a realistic arrival in the mid-2030s. Meanwhile more than 80,000 vehicles a day already use the stretch between Langley and Abbotsford, and the transport minister has acknowledged publicly that valley travel is getting harder.
So the driving commute is long now and stays long for years. Plan around that rather than around a future improvement.
The Fraser Valley Express takes about 90 minutes
The Fraser Valley Express, BC Transit route 66, runs from Chilliwack through Abbotsford and Carvolth to Lougheed Town Centre, where it connects to SkyTrain. Scheduled one-way time is about 90 minutes, traffic depending, with 19 round trips on weekdays from roughly 4:40am. A single ride is $5 and a 30-day pass $100.
Passenger rail east of Langley has been studied and not funded. A provincial study completed in 2021, made public in 2024, costed three concepts including a Langley City to Chilliwack regional line of about 75 km. The ministry’s response was that further analysis would be required. No funding and no timeline exists, so treat any claim that rail is coming to Chilliwack as a proposal rather than a plan.
For most residents this resolves into the car. The city’s own transportation plan found over 91% of commuting trips were made by car, on 2016 census figures.
Housing: benchmark down 5.2% year over year
Chilliwack prices came down through 2026. The composite benchmark was $704,600 in August, off 5.2% year over year, with detached homes at $859,200 and apartments at $401,000. CMHC’s October 2025 survey put average rent at $1,227 for a one bedroom and $1,527 for two, at 3.1% vacancy.
Full figures, including the 2026 tax increase and current transit fares, are in our breakdown of what it costs to live here. Where those costs land depends heavily on the area, and the city’s twelve neighbourhoods differ more than newcomers expect, from Chilliwack Proper at a $55,600 median household income to Little Mountain at $101,000. We cover each in our neighbourhood guide.
One planning note for anyone buying: Chilliwack adopted a new Official Community Plan, Bylaw 5500 or “OCP 2050”, on 16 December 2025. It reset land-use designations across the city on a 25-year framework, so any older advice about what can be built where is out of date.
Schools, and the capacity problem
School District 33 runs 30 schools and enrolled about 15,192 students as of November 2025. One of the few growing districts in the province, and it is full.
The district reported operating at 103% of functional capacity, with 12 of 29 measured sites over their design limit:
| School | Enrolment vs design capacity |
|---|---|
| Cheam Elementary | 260 students in a building designed for 120, or 217% |
| Chilliwack Secondary | 1,620 against 1,200, or 135% |
| A.D. Rundle Middle | 564 students, 125% |
| Sardis Secondary | 1,501 students, 125%, with a 400-seat expansion underway |
| Chilliwack Middle | 640 students, 122% |
| G.W. Graham Secondary | 1,605 students, 115% |
| Vedder Middle | 671 students, 112% |
Source: School District 33 data reported November 2025.
Relief is funded but not immediate. A 500-seat East Side Elementary on McGrath Road opens in September 2027, and a second elementary has been proposed for Promontory under the district’s ten-year enrolment plan.
The practical advice: do not assume the closest school has room. SD33 publishes a school locator rather than static catchment maps, and boundaries are under active review, so check your exact address with the district before you commit to a house for a particular school.
On results, the Fraser Institute’s 2026 elementary report card rates Greendale Community at 7.5 out of 10, the highest-rated public elementary in Chilliwack, with Cheam and Yarrow Community at 7.2. Timothy Christian, an independent school, tops the local table at 8.4. No current secondary ratings exist for Chilliwack schools; the Fraser Institute suspended its BC secondary report card after the 2021/22 data and has said it will not resume without provincewide testing, so any secondary “rating out of 10” you see quoted is out of date.
Post-secondary
The University of the Fraser Valley’s Chilliwack campus opened in 2012 at Canada Education Park, on former Canadian Forces Base land, alongside a trades and technology centre and the Justice Institute of BC. UFV serves more than 16,000 students a year across all its campuses and offers over 100 programmes.
Chilliwack General runs a full emergency service
Chilliwack General Hospital runs around the clock with emergency, intensive care, general medicine, cardiac care, obstetrics, general and orthopaedic surgery, psychiatry and diagnostic imaging, and it is a UBC family medicine residency teaching site.
Capacity is strained, and Fraser Health publishes the evidence itself. On its report card for the period ending September 2025, only 15.8% of patients admitted through emergency were placed within the ten-hour target, against a 65% target. An average of 15.9 admitted patients a day were waiting for an inpatient bed, against a target of 7.0. Eight of 27 tracked indicators met target. Non-emergency surgery did meet its standard, with 95.7% completed inside 26 weeks.
That is a real consideration for anyone moving with ongoing medical needs, and it is the kind of thing a relocation guide should tell you rather than skip.
Work: agriculture is about 30% of the economy
Agriculture anchors the local economy. Regional economic development material describes farming as around 30% of economic activity, with roughly 721 farms and about two thirds of the city’s land in agricultural use. Advanced manufacturing accounts for roughly 8% of the local workforce, and about 20 aviation and aerospace businesses operate from Chilliwack Regional Airport. Fraser Health and the school district are among the largest public employers.
Statistics Canada’s monthly labour force release does not break out Chilliwack in its headline tables, so there is no current city unemployment rate to quote. For reference, BC’s rate was 6.5% and Canada’s 6.4% in August 2026.
Many residents work west. That returns you to the commute section, which is the honest centre of this decision.
Outdoors, and what the space actually buys
Chilliwack delivers on this part without qualification.
Cultus Lake Provincial Park is 11 km southwest of the city, with four campgrounds and sandy beaches. Sx̱ótsaqel/Chilliwack Lake Park lies about 64 km out, with 40 km of trails and 182 frontcountry campsites. Closer in, the Vedder Rotary Loop runs more than 20 km of nearly flat gravel trail along the river, taking in the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve and Browne Creek Wetlands.
In town, the Chilliwack Landing Leisure Centre has a wave pool, an eight-lane 25-metre competition pool with an adjustable floor, two therapeutic pools and an outdoor water playground. The Chilliwack Coliseum seats 5,000 and hosts the Chiefs of the BC Hockey League.
Weather: the wet, warm end of the Fraser Valley
Chilliwack sits at the wet, warm end of the Fraser Valley: mild grey winters with rain rather than much snow, and summers that run hotter and drier than the coast. Environment and Climate Change Canada’s long-term normals for this area come from the Agassiz station about 15 km northeast, and its 1991–2020 tables render only in a browser, so exact normals are not quoted here rather than quoted from an unreliable secondary copy.
Summer smoke is the real seasonal issue. On 21 August 2026 an orange air quality warning covered the eastern Fraser Valley including Chilliwack, with the Air Quality Health Index reading 10+, the very high risk band. Environment Canada runs a separate index zone for the eastern valley, and the city maintains its own air quality page. If anyone in the household has asthma, budget for a good filter.
Flood risk, plainly
A large share of Chilliwack sits on the Fraser River floodplain behind an extensive dike system the city maintains. After the 2021 atmospheric river, a $65 million package was committed across the city, Sqwá First Nation and Shxwhá:y Village, funding 8 km of new dikes, a new floodgate at Hope Slough and a new drainage pump system, with a separate $5 million provincial investment in shoreline stabilisation.
The work is needed. A provincially commissioned study in 2014 found many Chilliwack dike sections short of the required 0.6 m freeboard, with some needing to be raised by up to 0.8 m to withstand a flood on the scale of 1894. And the risk is live: in March 2026 the BC River Forecast Centre upgraded the Fraser Valley to a flood watch after days of rain and rapid snowmelt, before standing it back down three days later.
Check flood designation and insurance for any specific address before you buy. Flooding sits on the city’s standing hazard list alongside earthquakes, wildfire, landslides in hillside areas and heat.
The highest crime rate of any CMA in Canada
Chilliwack has the highest police-reported crime rate and Crime Severity Index of any census metropolitan area in Canada, confirmed again in Statistics Canada’s 2025 data released in July 2026. The weighting is heavily toward property crime. We go through what those two measures actually count, and what no source can tell you about individual neighbourhoods, in our look at Chilliwack’s crime numbers.
The case for and against
Works well if: you want space and a yard within reach of Metro Vancouver, you work locally or remotely, you spend weekends outdoors, and you are buying rather than renting into a tight market.
Works badly if: you commute to Vancouver daily, you need a specific school with room in it this September, you rely on frequent transit, or you have medical needs that depend on short emergency waits.
If you are still comparing valley cities, we have the same treatment for Langley and Abbotsford, a closer-in comparison in Richmond’s cost of living, and a provincial overview in our wider look at BC communities.
Moving to Chilliwack
Most moves into Chilliwack come from further west, which means a long highway leg, and the timing of that leg decides how the day goes. Leaving Metro Vancouver mid-morning rather than at eight puts you past the worst of Highway 1. Hillside addresses in Promontory and the Eastern Hillsides also need checking for truck access before the day, because a 26-foot truck and a steep narrow driveway are a bad surprise at 8am.
Our Chilliwack movers run this corridor weekly and can tell you what your address needs. As a Vancouver moving company we handle the trip in both directions.
Frequently asked questions
Is Chilliwack a good place to live?
For buyers who want space and work locally or remotely, yes, and the population growth reflects it. For daily commuters to Vancouver it is a hard sell: Highway 1 widening has no funded phase reaching Chilliwack, the express bus takes about 90 minutes to Lougheed, and rail east of Langley is studied but unfunded.
How long is the commute from Chilliwack to Vancouver?
Chilliwack is about 100 km from downtown Vancouver on Highway 1, and travel time swings widely with congestion. Route 66, the express bus, is scheduled at about 90 minutes to Lougheed Town Centre, where it meets SkyTrain. More than 80,000 vehicles a day use the Langley to Abbotsford stretch, and no funded widening phase reaches Chilliwack yet.
Are Chilliwack schools good?
Results are mixed and capacity is the bigger issue. SD33 ran at 103% of functional capacity in November 2025, with 12 of 29 sites over design limits and Cheam Elementary at 217%. A new 500-seat elementary opens September 2027. On the Fraser Institute’s 2026 elementary report card, Greendale Community is the top-rated public elementary at 7.5 out of 10. There are no current secondary ratings for any BC school.
Does Chilliwack flood?
Much of the city sits on the Fraser floodplain behind dikes. A $65 million package after the 2021 floods is funding 8 km of new dikes, a Hope Slough floodgate and new drainage pumps. Work commissioned by the province in 2014 found many dike sections short of the required freeboard, and the valley was under a flood watch as recently as March 2026. Check the designation for any specific address.
Is Chilliwack growing?
Quickly. It was Canada’s second-fastest-growing census metropolitan area between 2016 and 2021 at 12.1%, and the city projects roughly 132,000 residents by 2035 to 2040. An Official Community Plan adopted in December 2025 sets the framework for that growth.
