Looking at the BC Stats report and the one from the city, I don't see anything about the potential effects of local and regional resource extraction and processing. Maaaaaaybe BC Stats is accounting for this in the underlying data and not pointing it out? While PG's economic drivers have been steadily diversifying (education and healthcare have been growing sectors - you and Joel McKay wrote about it in a previous newsletter here https://akurjata.substack.com/p/it-will-take-years-to-measure-the) and we have limited capability to predict the political and economic landscape 25 years from now, I suspect we will be seeing massive changes to the resource industry up here, which will directly impact our population.
And to talk directly about the impacts the changing resource landscape is having on my household specifically: my husband worked at Northwood for the last 12 years - and by this time next week, Husband will be living in Edmonton, and starting a new job a week after that, because of the growing precariousness of the Canfor mills. I'm incredibly lucky to have a job that can be done remotely (and the support of my supervisor, boss, and union!) and will be joining him in a few months. We're grateful to be 'getting out' before another mill closure is announced, because that will increase the competition for jobs and potentially affect the housing market as people seek employment elsewhere. While the impact of this on PG is minuscule (we're just two people), we will no longer be spending our money in town, illustrating the downstream effects of population changes: contributions to the local economy such as eating out and supporting local businesses.
Anyway it's first thing in the morning and I'm rambling in my under-caffeinated state. Thank you thank you thank you for drawing attention to this and providing a comment section where us readers can have conversations (ngl - 4streegrrl, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this!)
I don't think 100k by 2050 is that unreasonable. Population forecasting is a bit of a dark art, but I think there is a tendency for forecasters to be rather conservative these days with their projections, versus some of the over-the-top projection that were made in the 1950's.
Looking at the BC Stats report and the one from the city, I don't see anything about the potential effects of local and regional resource extraction and processing. Maaaaaaybe BC Stats is accounting for this in the underlying data and not pointing it out? While PG's economic drivers have been steadily diversifying (education and healthcare have been growing sectors - you and Joel McKay wrote about it in a previous newsletter here https://akurjata.substack.com/p/it-will-take-years-to-measure-the) and we have limited capability to predict the political and economic landscape 25 years from now, I suspect we will be seeing massive changes to the resource industry up here, which will directly impact our population.
And to talk directly about the impacts the changing resource landscape is having on my household specifically: my husband worked at Northwood for the last 12 years - and by this time next week, Husband will be living in Edmonton, and starting a new job a week after that, because of the growing precariousness of the Canfor mills. I'm incredibly lucky to have a job that can be done remotely (and the support of my supervisor, boss, and union!) and will be joining him in a few months. We're grateful to be 'getting out' before another mill closure is announced, because that will increase the competition for jobs and potentially affect the housing market as people seek employment elsewhere. While the impact of this on PG is minuscule (we're just two people), we will no longer be spending our money in town, illustrating the downstream effects of population changes: contributions to the local economy such as eating out and supporting local businesses.
Anyway it's first thing in the morning and I'm rambling in my under-caffeinated state. Thank you thank you thank you for drawing attention to this and providing a comment section where us readers can have conversations (ngl - 4streegrrl, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this!)
I don't think 100k by 2050 is that unreasonable. Population forecasting is a bit of a dark art, but I think there is a tendency for forecasters to be rather conservative these days with their projections, versus some of the over-the-top projection that were made in the 1950's.