By H. Wade MacLauchlan
Commentary
The debate prompted by Blake Doyle's column (The Guardian, Jan. 5, 2013) and Hans Connor's letter (Jan. 8, 2013) is timely as P.E.I. enters a new year. On the surface, it's a debate about whether we should be actively recruiting immigrants. In a broader sense, it's about growth. The real issue, however, is not whether we should grow the social, economic and cultural pie on Prince Edward Island, but what we can do to avert certain decline. As things are currently lined up, P.E.I. faces two demographic certainties: there will be fewer of us, and we will be older. These are both barriers to growth.
Immigration has been a good thing for Prince Edward Island. Can we imagine what our province would be like if it weren't for the Lebanese people who came here early in the 20th century, or the people from Holland and elsewhere in Europe, including war brides, who came after the Second World War? Apart from First Nations people, each of us can trace our ancestry to forbears who came here from somewhere else, typically with limited resources and choices, to make a better life.
If P.E.I.'s history could be summed up in three words, it would be: "Grow or go". Without opportunities to grow and prosper, people leave. Unfortunately, P.E.I.'s history has been more about outmigration than about growth and prosperity. In the last three decades of the 19th century, after the collapse of shipbuilding and in the face of a worldwide economic depression, close to 30 per cent of the P.E.I. population moved away. In 1931, 63 per cent of the P.E.I. labour force worked on farms. By 1971, this proportion declined to 12.5 per cent. The majority of the people who left farming moved away. Between 1962 and 1966, 7,000 Islanders, especially the young and mobile, moved to other Canadian provinces.
Our biggest challenge today is not to embrace the view that immigration is good, but to grasp the urgency of our demographic situation. In 2012, the P.E.I. working-age population (aged 15-64) peaked at just under 100,000, and will henceforth decline. This age group is projected to drop below 74,000 by 2052; i.e., a decline of more than 25 per cent in four decades. We cannot possibly maintain our current economy with 75 per cent of the workforce. Beginning in 2020, deaths will outnumber births for the first time, and will continue to do so. By 2050, P.E.I.'s population will drop below 130,000, and continue declining. These are forecasts of the P.E.I. government and can be studied further at http://www.gov.pe.ca/photos/original/pt_pop_proj.pdf
What is worrying about these official population projections is that they may be too optimistic. They are based on three key assumptions: (1) that outmigration from P.E.I. will be matched by an equal number of people migrating here from other provinces (i.e., that inter-provincial migration will net out at zero); (2) that the ‘fertility rate' will remain steady at its current level, rising slightly from 1.63 to 1.68 from 2012 to 2052 (P.E.I.'s fertility rate declined steadily between 1950 and 2000); and (3) that P.E.I. will attract 300 new immigrants per year, and retain 75 per cent of them. If any of these three assumptions is overly optimistic, P.E.I.'s future population will be both smaller and older than the official negative projections. Of the three factors, immigration has the greatest room for a positive upside, given a vigourous and strategic effort.
It is in the face of these demographic realities that Blake Doyle and others urge the need to recruit immigrants to P.E.I., and to retain them as productive citizens. This is not about a choice between the status quo and spiralling growth. It is about choosing to take a strategic approach to our total population, including immigration, rather than march forward into certain decline. P.E.I. should have a population strategy that is broadly shared, founded on a well-informed sense of urgency about what is at stake.
H. Wade MacLauchlan is president emeritus of the University of Prince Edward Island. He is a member of the "Connectors" Committee of the Great Charlottetown Chamber of Commerce. On Monday, Jan. 14, he will give a talk on ‘Demographics and Destiny: A Challenge for P.E.I.' at Holland College.
