Dream about them and they will come: Drilling into Heather Stefanson's target of 2 million Manitobans by 2030

Throughout the latest provincial election campaign, most of the promises coming from Manitoba's Progressive Conservatives have involved tax cuts.

Taxation pledges from the PCs, who are seeking a third consecutive term, include slashing the tax rate in half for the lowest income tax bracket, getting rid of the payroll tax and letting seniors defer their property taxes.

While all of these promises are easy for voters to understand, they leave economists scratching their heads about how Manitoba could possibly handle the resulting loss of revenue.

On Wednesday morning, PC Leader Heather Stefanson suggested Manitoba will simply grow the economy to replace all that revenue that will disappear if all those tax cuts proceed as planned.

"We have announced a hydrogen strategy, a critical minerals strategy, an energy strategy. All of these things are about growing our economy and putting us on the world map," Stefanson said following a breakfast speech to business leaders at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.

It is fair to call the PC leader's statement optimistic.

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The economics of hydrogen production, while promising in the long run, remain something of an unknown. Mines generally take decades to approve and develop. And Manitoba's energy strategy notes this province must soon find some way to double or even triple our electricity production, without building new hydro-electric dams, simply to meet industrial demand.

But that is not the only optimistic statement emanating from Heather Stefanson.

Twice this week, she effectively promised to triple Manitoba's annual population growth. 

On Monday and again on Wednesday, Stefanson pledged to bring Manitoba's population up from just over 1.4 million people this year to two million souls by 2030.

This would require annual population growth in the vicinity of 85,000 people a year. 

Lower taxes, Stefanson said, will help these additional humans materialize.

"I think if we are more competitive as a province than we have been in the past, then we will attract those individuals here," said Stefanson, who promised to retain more Manitobans and recruit more people from other provinces.

As the PC leader correctly noted, this province loses more people to other provinces than we gain. But in 2022, the net loss to other provinces was 10,132 people, according to Statistics Canada.

That means if Manitoba somehow manages to eliminate outmigration over the next six years, we could end up with 60,000 more people.

2022 growth not sustainable

So where will Heather Stefanson find the other half a million people Manitoba needs to reach two million people by 2030?

Stefanson suggested immigration will do the trick.

This too is optimistic, even as record immigration helped this province experience record population growth.

In 2022, Manitoba's population grew by a record 33,489 people, mainly because immigration officials cleared a pandemic backlog of applications and refugees flooded in from Ukraine and Afghanistan.

According to the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics, nearly 41,839 immigrants and refugees arrived in Manitoba last year. That is a stunning figure for this province.

But it isn't sustainable, even with both the federal and provincial government setting higher targets for immigration.

"If we're going the way I think we're going, we're going to have fewer immigrants," said Lori Wilkinson, a University of Manitoba sociology professor who studies migration.

A huge component of last year's record immigration, she noted, is due to the post-pandemic rebound.

"There's been a backlog of processing newcomers because they simply couldn't come in 2020 and 2021, and in 2022, it was still hard to get here," Wilkinson said.

As for refugees, Manitoba can not bank on another war or international humanitarian crisis to serve as a source of people.

Wilkinson, however, said we might want to consider the idea as climate change continues to get worse.

"If we talk about the world stock of migrants, we have to really think about climate change because there's going to be huge swaths of our world that are unlivable," she said.

"They're going to be under water. Canada is going to have to help pick up the slack, and we should — we have some space."

'Dream big': Stefanson

Serving as a haven in a coming climate dystopia is probably not what Stefanson had in mind when she envisioned Manitoba's population growing three or four times faster than it is right now.

Even if 2022's record growth continues, Manitoba will have trouble cracking 1.75 million people by 2030.

The PC leader acknowledged two million Manitobans by the end of the decade is an arbitrary target.

"We have to dream big for this province," she said on Wednesday after being asked where that number came from.

"I do believe that it is a realistic dream for us. We need to set those goals and those targets to show we're serious about growing our economy here."