After showing a slight decline in population five years ago, Prince George is growing again.
The 2011 census figures released by Statistics Canada Wednesday show the city's population at 71,974. That's 993 more people than we had in 2006, which amounts to a 1.4 per cent increase.
"I would love to see us growing at a faster rate but nonetheless, growth is growth and we'll take it," said Prince George mayor Shari Green. "Certainly it's good news in terms of our labour force development, our business growth and increasing our tax base, but we have to keep working at this aggressively.
"There are lots of things in the hopper to let people know that we're open for business and that this is the right service centre for all of the natural resources [development] going on in the North. We're the base of all that operation and I would expect to see our numbers continue to grow."
The 2006 census revealed Prince George's population dropped by two per cent, from 72,406 to 70,981, a figure that was revised from an earlier count.
Based on a land area of 318.26 square-kilometres, the city became slightly more densely populated in 2011, with 226.1 residents per sq. km. That compares to the 2006 density figures of 224.6 residents living in a city of 316 sq. km. The number of private dwellings in Prince George also increased to 31,797 in 2011, from 30,062 in 2006.
Census figures reveal the 2011 populations of Quesnel (10,007), Williams Lake (10,832), Vanderhoof (1,382) and Fort St. James (1,691) showed modest growth, while Mackenzie (3,507), McBride (586) have shrunken since 2006. Mackenzie showed the biggest decline, down 22.7 per cent from 2006, when the population stood at 4,539. The figures for Mackenzie and Fort St. James take into account each town's entire municipal district.
The actual census population count is based entirely on data received from census forms filled out by the public. According to Tara Bogh, director of downtown initiatives and economic analysis for Initiatives Prince George, figures released by BC Stats in January provide a more accurate population estimate. If that is true, Prince George has gained in population every year since 2006.
"Whenever they do a census there are some people who are not counted -- either they didn't receive a questionnaire or they didn't fill it out for some reason -- so Statistics Canada and BC Stats use other information to adjust the census counts for the purpose of producing current population estimates on a yearly basis," said Bogh.
"Our total population estimate has increased by about four per cent compared to 2006. We had about 72,890 people estimated in 2006 and 75,828 estimated in 2011. If you look at the BC Stats numbers they show five consecutive years of population growth for Prince George. It's important to juxtapose the increase in the last five years to the decade before, when Prince George was seeing pretty consistent population decline."
Bogh said the population of other cities across the country as well as the total in each province are undercounted by about three per cent in the census. The disbursement of transfer payments -- from the federal government to the provinces and from the province to municipalities -- take into account that three per cent imbalance and are increased accordingly.
B.C.'s population rose to 4,400,057, up seven per cent from 2006, when the province had 4,113,487 residents. B.C. was the second-fastest growing province in Canada, trailing only Alberta's 10.8 per cent growth rate, as compared to the national average of 5.9 per cent. The Yukon Territory grew by 11.6 per cent over the same five-year period.
Canada has added 1,863,791 new residents in five years for a 2011 census total of 33,476,688 people, up 5.9 per cent from 31,612,897 in 2006. The country still has fewer people than the world's largest city -- Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan -- a population the United Nations estimated in 2007 at 35,676,000.
See Saturday's Citizen for a more detailed breakdown of the 2011 census figures.
