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Outmigration: historic issue comes to
a head An almost iconographic image of Saskatchewan life is one of parents standing at their small town's bus depot, waving goodbye with a mixture of hope and heartbreak to a departing coach as it carries their child off to build a life elsewhere. It's been happening for decades: one of Saskatchewan's top exports is people, or so the saying goes. This, however, is no ordinary year - Saskatchewanians are going to the polls to select a party to govern them, and that means population is now a political issue, not just a policy or family one. Saskatchewan Party Leader Elwin Hermanson sees this issue as fertile ground. One of his major platform planks is growing Saskatchewan's population by 100,000 people in 10 years. The Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce identifies population growth as a priority for the province, and a group called Saskatchewan Agrivision Corp. held a conference this past summer on the theme of boosting the province's population to two million people in 20 years, effectively doubling it. "It's quickly becoming the theme of this campaign," said Brian Barrington-Foote, a Regina lawyer and one-time provincial deputy minister of justice. He moved to Calgary in the early 1990s and maintains an office there, but now resides in Saskatchewan again. He may be on to something about population as a political football:
This newfound interest in youth is good policy as well, for Saskatchewan has some major demographic problems. Numbers say it all The province has been losing people. There was a net departure of almost 25,000 between the 1996 and 2001 censuses. The last population figure given by Statistics Canada was 1,007,758 on April 1 - itself down about 5,000 from a year earlier. Only Newfoundland and Labrador lost proportionately more people. Statistics Canada has projected the province's population will shrink another 3.9 per cent by 2025. In 1931, the province had 921,000 people. It will be a cruel coincidence if that is Saskatchewan's population in 2031. Things like federal equalization payments are based in part on population. Saskatchewan Finance officials have calculated the province's drooping population could cost it about $250 million in federal funds over the next three years. It gets worse. The people who are leaving tend to be in their best employment and family-raising years. That makes them prime generators of economic activity. Saskatchewan has the highest percentage of people over 65 or under 18 of any province in Canada; such people tend to require more in the way of public services. The rural areas are aging, and sparsely populated to boot. That raises the cost of delivering services there. On top of that, Saskatchewan's work force also has the highest average age in Canada. For any Saskatchewan government, keeping people at home means competing with the image of seemingly boundless opportunity in Alberta, the most popular destination for Canadians on the move and a day's drive for most Saskatchewanians. When your neighbours are rich Alberta saw a net gain of almost 120,000 people between 1996 and 2001, the highest of any Canadian province. People between the ages of 15 and 29 accounted for 36 per cent of the total new Albertans. Almost 16,000 of those were from Saskatchewan. One reason is pretty clear: Albertans are better off. One recent Statistics Canada survey found that Alberta and Saskatchewan had the biggest jumps in median family income. But Alberta's median income was more than $60,000, while Saskatchewan was around $49,000. Doug Elliott of Sask Trends Monitor found that in between 1991 and 2001, Saskatchewan's economy created 28,600 jobs. That's a six per cent increase over a decade. Barrington-Foote said those numbers simply don't compare to Alberta (note: according to Statistics Canada, Alberta created 64,786 jobs in 2001; Saskatchewan created 4,268). But it's also worse than Manitoba (17,499 jobs created in 2001), which is more demographically comparable to Saskatchewan. Manitoba, however, has a more diversified economy, and Elliott said Saskatchewan's more agriculturally dominant one has been doing comparatively poorly in recently years, with low grain prices and now the mad cow crisis. In fact, Saskatchewan has been in recession in the past two years. Neither Prairie province, however, has seen the resource boom that Alberta has, with billions of dollars planned for upcoming oil sands development. That creates fantastic opportunities for everyone from those welding pressure vessels to the investment bankers assembling the capital required to finance the projects, Barrington-Foote said. The pull of home Asked why he came back to Saskatchewan, Barrington-Foote said it was simple: "My wife is from here and she missed her family." He left Calgary in 1995. Business was excellent and getting better. If a person wanted to pursue an entrepreneurial opportunity, there was lots of investment money around – much more so than in Saskatchewan, he said. Strangely, as good as life has been to many expatriate Saskatchewanians in Calgary, a good number of them would like to return, he said. One fellow he had lunch with recently had been in Calgary for 12 years and was doing quite well. "But under the right circumstances, he'd love to be back in Saskatoon," Barrington-Foote said. Besides the quality of life and family stuff, "people want to cheer for the [Saskatchewan] Roughriders," he chuckled. Loleen Berdahl is director of research for the Canada West Foundation in Calgary. She was born and raised in Saskatoon and would dearly love to return. But she's now in her early 30s, and it can't just be an opportunity for her - it has to be for her husband too. She thinks policy proposals that keep young people from leaving in the first place (she did her PhD in political science at the University of Calgary and stayed) are worth debating. For one thing, once people leave and have families, it's more complex to get them to come back. In addition, you miss out on any future population growth they produce by having children. Anyone who said they had a "silver bullet" of an answer, however, should be regarded as very suspect, she said. The matrix of factors is just too complex. Berdahl thinks one conversation Saskatchewan must have with itself is to come to grips with the fact it is becoming an urban province (64.3 per cent of people live in urban areas vs. 79.3 per cent for the west as a whole). Saskatoon, for example, is experiencing modest growth even though the province as a whole is shrinking. As agriculture continues to restructure itself, with farm sizes getting ever larger, that trend is bound to continue. She found it interesting that in surveys the foundation did this spring, 79 per cent of Saskatchewan respondents put retaining young people at the top policy priority, even above health or building rural industry. Can we grow? Now, about the 100,000 in 10 years? Is that achievable? Elliott has studied the issue. He notes that population growth has averaged 1,000 people per year between 1931 and 2001. There was growth of 9,000 per year from 1976 to 1976, but that's when the baby boomers were having their children. That condition doesn't currently exist. With the current natural growth rate, Saskatchewan would require net in-migration of about 8,000 people per year to grow by 10,000 per year. That is essentially unprecedented. "A significant change in the population trend line would
mean fundamental shifts in the economy, Still, Berdahl was glad her home province at least appears willing to talk about it and to set goals, even if they aren't easily achievable. "It's a lot better than someone saying, 'Last one out of Saskatchewan turn out the lights.'" |
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