Migration may well start with a simple billboard

DRIVING THROUGH HAMILTON RECENTLY, I saw a billboard that made me do a doubletake: it was promoting the University of Windsor.

That’s odd, I thought, given Hamilton has one of the province’s great universities, McMaster. Would Hamiltonians rather go to Windsor than McMaster?

But here’s the reality: McMaster is much harder to get into than Windsor. In fact, Windsor has traditionally been one of the easiest Ontario universities to get into.

So, if a university applicant is turned down by McMaster, and looking to go elsewehere, and Windsor is in their face, maybe they’ll give it a try.

Once they get there, maybe they’ll like it enough to stay.

When they graduate, maybe they’ll look for a job there.

As nature takes its course, maybe they’ll meet someone else who likes it there, settle down, raise a family, buy a house, pay taxes, volunteer in the community, and eventually become ambassadors for the city to which they migrated.

All because the University of Windsor bought a billboard in what used to be

their hometown.

That kind of migration from municipality to municipality is very much on the mind of professionals such as planners – including rural planners – who try to forecast the need for roads, housing, education and other services.

But it’s bigger than that. As the Rural Ontario Institute says, Ontario’s demographic structure is such that more people are reaching retirement age, compared to the age group who are potential labour market entrants.

That means regions wishing to grow their workforce must attract immigrants or migrants from other regions in Canada, as well as from abroad.

Not that it’s overly easy for immigrants to move once they’re arrived in Canada. But it’s much easier than getting here in the first place. So communities are dedicating at least some of their promotional efforts on attracting immigrants or migrants from other regions in Canada.

In the ongoing and some- times uphill battle to equip decision makers with facts, so that policy and decisions can be based on research rather than emotion, the institute is working through a new set of fact sheets about rural Ontario. The first of this new series deals with migration in and out of rural communities in the province.

According to the institute, migration into communities is very active. Most non-metro census divisions, which encompass communities, are augmenting their populations by attracting what they call inmigrants, compared to the number of out-migrants.

Among those census divisions with a positive net migration, the major contributor was the net in-migration of individuals 45-64 years old.

This age group includes the more-experienced members of the workforce, plus early retirees.

That’s good for the short term, if your community needs investment and stability.

But for the longer term, there’s a problem. Among the non-metro (rural) census divisions with people moving out, the loss of young adults 18-24 years old was the major contributor.

The biggest problems are in the north. There, across all age groups, net migration contributed to a population loss of 0.5 per cent or more per year in the census districts of Sudbury, Cochrane, Rainy River and Timiskaming. Relatively close to home, Huron also took a big hit.

But it’s not all bad news. At the other end of the spectrum, net migration across all age groups represented a population growth 0.5 per cent or more per year in the census district of Oxford, as well as Haliburton, Northumberland, Muskoka and Kawartha Lakes.

Efforts like those of the Rural Ontario Institute, to give meaning behind the light of rural Ontario, must be supported, ongoing and intensified. Some migration to rural communities will happen naturally, as home buyers seek affordable housing. But will that offset the opportunities young people seek in metro areas?