N.L. population takes another tumble: census

Newfoundland and Labrador's populationhas continued to drop, although results of the 2006 census show the rate of decline has slowed, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday.

As part of its first reports of the 2006 census, Statistics Canada said Newfoundland and Labrador's population stood at 505,469.

That represents a 1.5 per cent drop in population from the 2001 census count of 512,930, which itself recorded a far steeper decline of 7 per cent from the preceding census, in 1996.

"It's a decrease, but the trend is sort of slowing down," said Statistics Canada communications official Marc Melanson.

Indeed, some observers had been expecting an evensteeper drop.

Doug May, a Memorial University economist who specializes in labour force changes, said it's clear that many people from Newfoundland and Labrador have headed west for work— notably in Alberta's oilpatch— but have not changed their permanent residence.

"I think obviously that these people have said, 'Lookit, this is where home is, this is where our family is,'" May told CBC News.

"This idea of attachment to home and community, I think, is very, very strong."

Declining population has been a primary issue in Newfoundland and Labrador for years, particularly in the wake of the 1992 moratorium on the northern cod fishery, which put about 20,000 people out of work. The 1991 census counted a population of about 568,000.

Since the mid-1990s, the population in rural areas has dropped dramatically, and the province's birthrate— one of the highest in the country a few decades ago— is now among the lowest.

Finance Minister Tom Marshall said Wednesday that the census figures are not final population counts, and that a final count will be larger.

"Government takes issues surrounding outmigration and challenges facing our rural communities very seriously," Marshall said in a statement. He cited government investment in fields such as silviculture, aquaculture and infrastructure as efforts to help rural economies.

However, even the provincial government's most optimistic scenarios for the decades ahead forecast a continuing slide in population, with the psychologically important barrier of 500,000 being broken within a decade. Statistics Canada's own projections show an anticipated slide to about 490,000 over the next generation.

Already, important markers have been reached. In 2006, for instance, the number of deaths in Newfoundland and Labrador matched the number of births— a first in Canadian demographic history.