Inflated opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/03/2016 (3518 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Over the past few years, Mayor Brian Bowman and Premier Greg Selinger have spoken about growing Winnipeg’s population to one million people. If this is their goal, they better start having more children.

I’m not being facetious. Based on current population-growth rates, City of Winnipeg number crunchers expect this municipality to grow to one million people around 2046. This is folly, as no credible statistician would make the optimistic assumption current growth rates will persist for 30 years.

Based on changes expected to Winnipeg’s demographics as well as Canadian migration patterns, it’s possible the city’s population may never grow to one million people. The population of the city proper — that is, the areas within the City of Winnipeg’s formal limits — is likely to level off some time in the middle of this century near the 900,000 mark.

Even the Winnipeg Census Metropolitan Area, which encompasses the Manitoba capital and neighbouring municipalities where more than half the adult population commutes into the city to work or study, isn’t expected to crack one million until the latter part of the century.

This is partly because Winnipeggers, like most urban Canadians, are getting older. What demographers call the “natural increase” in population — the difference between the numbers of births and deaths every year — is heading into negative territory.

The other factor to consider is immigration into Canada, which is the single largest factor driving migration into Winnipeg. In the coming decades, immigration is expected to level off. Combine a steady number of people coming into the country with a natural decrease in population, and we will soon find this city’s population-growth rate falling below its current level.

Wait a sec, you’re probably thinking: how is it possible Winnipeg’s population will soon level off when politicians tell us the city will soon reach that one-million-person milestone?

The answer has to do with basing population projections on what’s happening right now. This is like predicting the sky will get brighter in the evening because the sun is rising in morning.

Right now, Winnipeg enjoys a population growth of approximately 1.2 per cent per year. That translates into about 9,000 new people a year, a healthy influx that drive the economy and increases government revenue.

According to City of Winnipeg estimates based on Statistics Canada data, the city’s population will stand at 727,500 on July 1. The Winnipeg CMA — the city plus 10 neighbouring municipalities, as well as Brokenhead Ojibway Nation — is expected to be 804,200 on Canada Day. These short-term projections are very likely to meet their mark. But official projections looking further into the future are based on the optimistic assumption current growth rates will continue for decades.

In 2013, the city published an economic forecast that projected Winnipeg proper will have 910,000 people by 2035 and the Winnipeg CMA will be 1.02 million. Those projections were based on a Conference Board of Canada prediction population growth rates will average around 1.2 per cent for two solid decades.

Private demographers, who do not have a stake in Winnipeg’s economy, do not believe current conditions will continue. In 2014, Vancouver demographic-analysis firm Urban Futures published a report projecting the Winnipeg CMA would grow to 896,000 by 2033 and 926,000 by 2041. Given the population of the city proper lags behind the Winnipeg CMA by about 80,000 people right now, the vaunted one-million-person milestone looks a lot further away. It may not ever arrive.

This is because Urban Futures expects the city’s population-growth rate to decline to 0.6 per cent a year in the 2020s and continue to become less robust into the 2040s, as Winnipeggers get older and have fewer kids while immigration levels off.

“As in many other parts of the country, annual population growth rates are expected to decline over time, the result of both migration levels moderating and a general demographic shift of the population out of the prime childbearing age groups and into the higher mortality ones,” Urban Futures wrote in its report.

The implications of this sober assessment are significant.

An aging population means a greater future demand for home and condo ownership, as opposed to rental apartments. But slower growth means the city cannot expect its pool of taxable properties to keep growing at the current rate — and the province can expect less growth revenue from its primary economic engine.

In other words, the mayor and premier want to believe we’re getting to one million because their financial plans, such as they are, rely on steady, modest growth. Our projected growth is expected to be steady, but it will be weak, as opposed to modest.

Politicians ought to stop talking about one million people and start figuring how to serve the population we have right now, with the revenue streams that exist.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca