Population numbers offer nice surprise

Saskatchewan’s population numbers shouldn’t be as good as they are ... or so we have been repeatedly led to believe.

The news pumped out by Premier Brad Wall’s propaganda machine this week was that in July we hit “one more milestone ... an all-time high” of 1,150,632 people, after growing by 5,314 people in the second quarter of 2016.

The new Statistics Canada population numbers were more than the usual well-spun news coming from Wall’s communication department:

Population numbers are actually harder to spin or manipulate because the only thing relevant is the overall number, which tell us if we have fewer or more people, and;

Given recent economic trends — and even the most recent population numbers, showing a slowing of Saskatchewan growth — it is pleasantly surprising the numbers are as good as they are.

Passing a mini-milestone of 1.15 million people is certainly politically important to the government. (Remember: When the Sask. Party first proposed growing the province by 100,000 people, it was thought an unrealistic goal. Well, we topped 1.1 million people and we now seem well on our way to topping the Sask. Party’s new goal of 1.2 million by 2020.)

Population growth remains a key psychological indicator of success for a province that was stagnant for so long. And this particular growth spurt came at time when all indicators suggested Saskatchewan’s population may have been starting to go the other way.

The 5,314 additional people from April to July represents the largest quarterly increase since July 2013. A province experiencing budget problems and a downturn in oil and potash revenue shouldn’t have expected its biggest population spike in three years.

Well, there are reasons why the population news was better than expected — some of it based on surprisingly good news, but some based on other trends that might be a little more disconcerting in the future.

One bit of good news is the shift in Saskatchewan demographics away from a senior-dominated population to one in which we have more people in their prime earning and spending years and (more significantly to this story) their prime child-bearing years.

Saskatchewan’s births-over-deaths rate for the April to July period was 6,300 — a positive increase from the 5,000 in the same threemonth period a year earlier and far better than the quarterly-year low of 3,000 in 2003, said Doug Elliott, statistician and publisher of SaskTrends Monitor.

At least some of that demographic change can be attributed to Saskatchewan’s ongoing success in attracting new Canadians — many with young (and sometimes larger) families.

The first half of 2016 saw about 8,500 new Canadians arrive in Saskatchewan — an improvement from the 6,000 in the first half of 2015, Elliott noted.

And while we are still losing people to Alberta (and even other provinces like Ontario), the good news is we aren’t losing quite as many. “People have stopped coming (to Saskatchewan from Alberta), but they have stopped leaving (Saskatchewan in high numbers to move Alberta),” Elliott said.

The statistician pointed to the net 1,500 Saskatchewan people who left for Alberta from July 2015 to July 2016, compared with the net 3,000 Saskatchewanians who left for Alberta from July 2014 to July 2015 — about the time oil started its sharp decline.

“There is no giant sucking sound from Alberta,” Elliott said. “Mr. Wall is right. We are doing fine.”

But while the news is surprisingly good, there are a couple of cautionary notes to this tale, he added.

New Canadians coming here (including 1,000 Syrians) tend to come for lower-paying jobs than those leaving for Alberta and better opportunity.

“There is no one more mobile than a new arrival from (a place like) the Philippines,” said Elliott, explaining that new arrivals without deep roots are among the first to look for work in other provinces.

Budgetary and economic problems, combined with a decline in jobs in 2016, means the population could follow suit.

But at least for now, Saskatchewan’s growing population is weathering the storm — some much-appreciated good news for Wall.