Province urged to be 'far more aggressive' in dealing with population growth

With P.E.I. growing at a record pace and the government's updated population strategy perhaps months away, opposition parties are growing anxious.

The government is currently working with a population strategy written in 2017.

In May, provincial projections estimated the province could hit a population of 200,000 in 2030. At the current rate of growth, that would happen in 2027.

"There really has not been a thought-out plan here to say, 'What does Prince Edward Island look like under a population of 200,000 people?'" said Liberal housing critic Robert Henderson.

"Government needs to be far more aggressive in figuring that out."

The 2017 strategy was put in place to deal with an aging population. Labour was expected to be in short supply as more people aged out of the workforce than entered it. 

This is not a problem caused by the folks who are coming here… This is a lack of planning by government. This is where the problem lies.— Robert Henderson

The Green Party's Peter Bevan-Baker points out that the population growth everyone thought would address that issue has brought its own problems.

"It impacts so many things — provision of health care, education, child care, housing, loss of farmland — all of these things are directly related to a rapidly growing population," said Bevan-Baker.

"You have to be able to plan."

Those plans are coming, say representatives from the provincial government: a population plan is timed for later this summer, and a housing plan in the coming months. But at this stage of planning, neither Workforce, Advanced Learning and Population Minister Jenn Redmond nor Housing, Land and Communities Minister Rob Lantz was made available for a CBC News interview on the issues.

Strains on infrastructure

In addition to the pressures on the provision of services outlined by Bevan-Baker, Henderson added infrastructure to the list of things needing investment as the population grows.

He noted that even in his rural riding in Western P.E.I., he is seeing new development that is likely to lead to demands for more investment. With new homes going in along red clay roads, for example, he said those residents are likely to want pavement at some point.

Cities too seem to be coming up short of what is needed, he said.

"We've already seen a situation in Summerside where there was a little bit of a 'not-in-my-backyard' scenario where the infrastructure for transportation wasn't in place to handle high-density housing," said Henderson, referring to the Greenwood Drive application that was turned down earlier this week.

"That's going to make it very hard to continue. The policies aren't there to allow for expansion."

Another thing that a Green government would have done is to press pause on this some time ago, recognizing all of the challenges that the highest population growth rate in Canada is presenting to us.— Peter Bevan-Baker

With no effective strategy in place to deal with the growth, said Bevan-Baker, there is really only one option.

"Another thing that a Green government would have done is to press pause on this some time ago, recognizing all of the challenges that the highest population growth rate in Canada is presenting to us in all kinds of ways," he said.

"This is not a problem caused by the folks who are coming here. … This is a lack of planning by government. This is where the problem lies."

High growth expected to continue

In the past, P.E.I.'s population projections have assumed that over the long term, interprovincial migration would result in zero population growth, with the number of people leaving equal to the number arriving.

Given that, the 2017 strategy focused on immigration.

Population projections have been off largely because the assumption that interprovincial migration would be zero has not been accurate. Since 2017, the province has seen a net population gain of more than 7,000 people through movement across provincial borders.

That, combined with ramped-up immigration, brought on the record growth of recent years.

Nigel Burns, director of statistics for the Department of Finance, said the province will be reconsidering that assumption in the coming years. He believes the economic opportunities created by the province's growth will continue to attract other Canadians to P.E.I.

"The population of P.E.I. is going to be growing and we need to be planning for that," said Burns.

"We do need to get on with it. We know that the population is growing. We know we're not going to get it right every year, and this year looks extraordinary based on the data that's just come in."

Recent estimates have suggested the province needs about 2,000 housing starts a year to keep up with growth, and that doesn't include dealing with the current housing shortage.

The unexpected rapid growth in 2022 suggests 2,000 won't be enough, Burns said.

But even that target looks unreachable at the moment. P.E.I.'s best year for housing starts since 2017 was 2019, with 1,504 starts.