Prince Edward Island, Halifax make bold bids for East Coast growth

By By Keith Doucette, The Canadian Press

HALIFAX – Canada’s smallest province and Atlantic Canada’s biggest city both presented plans to grow Tuesday, as jurisdictions across the East Coast battle to spark economic prosperity.

In its throne speech delivered Tuesday, Prince Edward Island’s Liberal government said it wants to increase the Island’s population to 150,000 as early as the end of 2017 — an overall target that would see an increase of just over 3,500 people in that time.

According to provincial statistics, more people have left the Island since 2004 than have come to settle there, with the gap currently around 1,200 a year.

“As a consequence our working age population has been decreasing since 2013,” says the speech. “Sustainable economic growth relies upon the ability to increase our population, expand our skills and grow our workforce.”

As a result, the government said it would put in place a long-term strategy to repatriate, recruit and retain a skilled workforce over the next year.

Also Tuesday, Halifax regional council began debating a proposed new economic plan that calls for it to increase its population by more than 50,000 over the next five years.

It also recommends increasing the city’s gross domestic product in that time period by $3.5 billion in order to keep the 2,000 immigrants who arrive every year and the 1,300 young people who leave to work elsewhere.

The document says by 2036 Nova Scotia is forecasted to have 100,000 fewer working-age people and 60,000 more people over the age of 65.

“This will put greater pressure on the province’s capital city,” the plan states. “Halifax’s economy will have to grow just to maintain residents’ current standard of living.”

P.E.I.’s plan includes new marketing initiatives to entice Islanders to return home and it will launch a new website to match job seekers with local employers. A pilot project will also look to connect more than 900 post-secondary international students with Island employers.

To help prepare students for technological change in the workplace, the government says it will introduce a new pilot project that provides instruction on coding in Island schools.

Jim Randall, chair of island studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, said the modest target contained in the throne speech is reasonable given trends over the last six months that have seen a steady flow of immigrants and an influx of refugees.

But Randall said the persistent problem in the Atlantic provinces is a urban-rural divide along population lines.

“There have been population increases . . . in the urban areas, but it’s largely small towns and rural areas that continue to lose population,” said Randall.

Randall said any population strategy has to be linked to a broader economic strategy and governments know that.

He said it’s important to note that small economies such as those found in P.E.I. and the rest of Atlantic Canada can change very quickly “for good or bad.”

“So when you have a few good sectors that are creating high quality jobs and indirect employment that’s created from that, that can have a tremendous relative increase in the population in a region,” he said.

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