If people don't settle, James Bay can't survive as a community, local group says

A group of businesses and municipal politicians in northern Quebec is calling on the province to encourage more people to live in the James Bay region because, they say, a plummeting population has brought the local economy to a breaking point. 

According to the Administration regionale Baie-James (ARBJ), the region's population has seen a 30 per cent decline over the last 30 years. 

Now, a steering committee with the ARBJ, comprised of labour and political leaders, has been established to quickly suggest concrete solutions. 

The committee says it wants to see 400 families move to the region in the next year to ensure its viability.

"The vitality of our communities depends on the occupation of the territory," said René Dubé, president of the ARBJ and mayor of Matagami, in a news release Wednesday. 

Dubé says the population crisis is caused in part by businesses' reliance on fly-in, fly-out workers, meaning people who commute to the region to work but do not live there. He says one in five workers in the region do not live there.

"For service companies in our communities, whether they be depanneurs, grocery stores...they're having trouble getting customers because people are not living here. They're working here, but not living here," he said. 

That lack of permanent workers has also affected essential services, according to the committee. 

Dubé is calling for incentives from the Quebec government to get people who currently work in the region to move there full time.

The allure of commuting

Geneviève Brisson, a community development specialist at the Université du Québec à Rimouski, says fly-in-fly-out work is not a new thing, and has always been an enticing option for many workers.

For regions like James Bay, Brisson says, workers can earn higher salaries in the area and spend their time off in other cities or countries that are not as isolated. She added these workers often don't spend money in the regions where they work.

Brisson says various parts of the province have been relying on commuter workers for decades, so getting permanent ones could prove challenging in northern Quebec.

Moreover, despite what ARBJ calls exceptional economic vitality, the region's declining migratory trend means fewer and fewer people are coming to work in James Bay at all, in addition to those who aren't settling down. 

The ARBJ group says it plans to meet with municipal councils from across the region and hold virtual town halls for residents about the issue this summer.