The cost of population growth

P.E.I. needs population growth, but we need to figure out how to accommodate anticipated growth

When I think about the province’s goal to add 10,000 people to the Island’s population in the next five years, I’m reminded of a plan years ago in Saskatchewan to deal with population growth woes.

That plan was Wascana Village. Introduced with much fanfare in 2013, the 736-acre development was situated in the Rural Municipality of Sherwood, which wraps around the City of Regina like a doughnut.

Wascana Village had everything that its projected 14,000 residents could want – three schools, a sewage treatment facility, a seniors home, healthcare facility, banks, office buildings, restaurants, family homes, four lakes and a toboggan hill.

The ongoing joke in my former Regina newsroom was: where is the monorail, referring to “The Simpsons”episode.

It was an ambitious project to say the least. Three years after being unveiled, it fell apart for a variety of reasons and now sits in limbo before a shovel ever hit the ground.

Returning to our current situation on P.E.I., the plan we hear about the most involves retaining young Island workers, replenishing an aging workforce and encouraging newcomers to settle in rural P.E.I.

You can’t argue that these are all important goals to aim for. Although the trend is for newcomers to settle in cities, let’s give the province some time to see if they can encourage rural immigration. And, having 10,000 more people on the Island spending money and contributing to the economy is also a good thing.

But what’s lost in these conversations is something that Wascana Village helps visualize — that 10,000 new residents are going to need services and infrastructure — whether they’re spread out in rural P.E.I. or flocking to cities.

So what might we need to accommodate 10,000 newcomers to the Island? More doctors? More specialists? More teachers? New schools? A new healthcare facility? More police? More firefighters? More affordable housing? A monorail? Well, not a monorail.

But the rest of the items, yes. The province did take a step in the right direction by hiring 18 doctors over the last 12 months. But surely more will be needed for an additional 10,000 residents.

There is already a strain on many resources with our existing population. And with only five years to play with, we need to start looking at these questions now: What are we going to need to accommodate growth? How much is it going to cost? And, what is the plan to pay for all of this?

But we do know who will be paying for it – taxpayers. These things aren’t going to magically appear. So, let’s start the dialogue sooner rather than later.