People Cities

Mark Leger is the editor and part-owner of Huddle. This is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region. It’s published first as a Saturday morning newsletter – sign up and receive our free daily newsletter as well.

When I came back to Saint John from Toronto in the mid-1990s I had no idea it was such a political move; that I was doing right by my province as a young person, bringing my skills and entrepreneurial drive back home. I thought I was just taking a great job in my hometown – a small city that wasn’t Toronto but had enough young people and vibrancy in the urban core to keep me happy.

It wasn’t until I launched a newspaper, called here, with a group of other young people, that I realized the “repatriation” of erstwhile New Brunswickers was part of an overall strategy that also included increasing immigration to reverse population decline.

Enthusiastically, I became part of the repatriation PR machine as the part-owner and editor of a paper that positioned itself as the voice of a new generation of Saint Johners. We wrote feature stories and columns on the vibrant urban culture that included live entertainment, restaurants and bars that made people realize our city was small but still a cool place to be.

I wrote many columns on the critical need for population growth. Sometimes I lamented what appeared to be an irreversible pattern of outmigration. Other times I was more hopeful or accepting. I still remember one piece I wrote based on a conversation I’d had with ex-pat New Brunswickers in a Toronto café. They missed their home province but at the time were understandably more focused on the lives they were building in a big city full of new opportunities.

Honestly, it grew tiresome always worrying about the need to grow in a slow-growth region. Twenty years later, we’re starting to see some gains with young people and immigrants, especially in the urban areas. But it’s still a preoccupation with economic planners, governments, and companies. As Don Mills and David Campbell have discussed in recent Huddle “Insights” podcast conversations with regional political and business leaders, as the population grows so does the GDP.

With all this in mind, I was intrigued to listen to the latest episode of “Insights” that features a conversation between Mills and Darrell Bricker, the Global CEO of Public Affairs for Ipsos and co-author of Empty Planet.

Podcast: Darrell Bricker On The ‘Empty Planet’ And What It Means For Atlantic Canada

In Empty Planet, published in 2019, Bricker and co-author John Ibbitson challenge the conventional wisdom, backed by the United Nations’ own projections, that the global population will continue to grow in the coming decades. Communities and countries around the world are basing their growth plans on having more and more people to generate new economic activity.

Bricker says the global population is going to shrink instead and we’ll have to rethink growth strategies as a result. The UN estimates the world will grow from seven billion to 11 billion before it starts to level off at the end of the century. Bricker and Ibbitson studied the work of other demographers and say the more likely scenario, based on declining birth rates in countries around the world, is that the global population will peak at nine million between 2040 and 2060 and then begin to decline.

Mills talks with Bricker about the research behind this conclusion and what it means for places like Atlantic Canada, which has experienced slow population and GDP growth for more than a decade.

Of course, there are benefits to a shrinking global population. Until we make a more significant transition to cleaner energy sources, more people mean more consumption of fossil fuels and the continuous and perilous rise of greenhouse gas emissions.

But our current economies are predicated upon the growth in population and consumption, which increases the GDP and creates more jobs. With increased tax revenue from employment and wealth creation, we pay for public services like infrastructure, education, and healthcare, which is more critical in Atlantic Canada because of the aging population.

Bricker says the decades-long efforts at retention, repatriation, and recruitment of young people haven’t yet made enough of a difference. Young people from Atlantic Canada keep “going down the road,” he says.

In the introduction to the Bricker interview, Campbell says this has left us with a troublesome “dependency ratio,” with too few young people in the workforce taking care of greater numbers of people retiring and accessing public services like healthcare.

Bricker says the aging population in Atlantic Canada makes an effective immigration strategy even more important.

“You’re going to have to become more attractive to immigrants,” he says. “Atlantic Canada has a very old population. The older you get the less likely you are to have kids. The only way to get bigger is to attract younger immigrants with skills who can participate in the economy.”

Atlantic Canada is still working to attract more younger people to move across the country to live and work here – the recent “remote worker” campaigns being the latest example of recruitment efforts during a pandemic that has some people leaving big cities for more affordable small cities with better qualities of life. I interviewed a young couple who made this move from Ontario in a “Home Office” podcast in April.

Podcast: The Owens Family Moves To The Maritimes

These campaigns are optimistic by nature, as are assumptions the world population will keep growing and our region will too if our strategies are well-crafted and executed. The reality, says Bricker, is that even immigration is going to become more difficult as the global birthrate continues to fall and countries compete more fiercely for skilled immigrants.

Bricker says around four percent of the country’s population lives in Atlantic Canada, and it’s projected to be about one percent by 2060. He says it’s critical to be realistic, to acknowledge the demographic challenges we face. “It’s actually quite difficult to get politicians to have a conversation about what’s really going on,” he says.

When I look back on my younger self, I can still see the formula for success. I was excited about having a good job in a small but vibrant community with strong social and professional networks. It’s our pitch to prospective newcomers from across the country and around the world – and one we need to keep making, whether we continue to grow or not.

Feedback? E-mail: [email protected].

Banner photo: Mark Leger/Huddle.