If We Want Growth, We Need The Capacity To Handle It
David Campbell is a Moncton-based economic development consultant and co-host of the Huddle podcast, Insights. The following piece was originally published on his blog, It’s the Economy, Stupid!, on Substack.
The population numbers are in, they are impressive and, combined with a more fickle workforce, start to tell the story of rising shortages across the economy.
New Brunswick’s population increased by a record 21,663 people between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022 (that’s a 2.7 percent growth rate). That is a record, and by a wide margin. Look at the chart: since 2016, New Brunswick’s population has increased by 53,000. I think back to my time in government when I was told to expect very little population growth for years to come. Oops.
Nova Scotia also had record population growth (28,608 people) and even Newfoundland added 5,500 people to its population. PEI added 5,930 (a 3.6 percent growth rate) but that is a continuation of a trend stretching back a decade or more.
What drove the growth? It wasn’t natural growth. New Brunswick had 8,387 deaths last year compared to 6,469 births. If it wasn’t for inward migration, the population would be down 1,918 people.
Immigration hit a new record as 8,401 people were added to New Brunswick’s population; net interprovincial migration hit a record too (10,612 people). There were 4,836 net non-permanent residents during the year.
The interprovincial flow increase was driven a lot by the pandemic. We shall see if it keeps up. My hunch is that we will need to get the immigrant numbers up to 10,000-12,000 in short order as the flow from mostly Ontario is likely to subside.
Adjusted for population size, PEI attracted the most immigrants, again, by a wide margin. That province brought in 201 people for every 10,000 already living there. Nova Scotia attracted 135 per 10,0000 and New Brunswick 103. The net interprovincial numbers were similar across the three Maritime provinces and trending upwards on the Rock.
Now we need to make sure we keep ‘em. And that means more doctors, more teachers, more workers at Service New Brunswick, more building inspectors, more pet groomers, more dentists, more… you get the picture.
If we want to grow, we need to have the capacity to handle growth. People won’t move here or stay here if there are high costs and long lines for everything.
But, you know by now my mantra. It’s better to have the problems of growth than of decline. And, boy, did we have growth last year.
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