The year after I was born, the world's population busted through the three billion barrier.
If you type in the "world population clock" in Google, we now have more than 7.3 billion people alive on this planet, and that number is increasing by the second.
The world is becoming an overcrowded place. The number of people is growing almost exponentially. It has more than doubled in my life time.
What do we do?
On a global scale, there is not much that can be done. Economists assume that as populated countries become more affluent, the economic shift will result in a decrease in the number of children per family and this will slow the rise in population. But it will take time.
Rising affluence did lead to declining birth rates in North America, Japan, and Europe. Most of the countries in the OECD have seen their birth rates fall below replacement levels.
Canada now has a birth rate of 1.61 which is well below replacement levels. It has averaged around 1.68 for the past 20 years. Without immigration, the population of Canada would start to decline.
However, immigration has held steady and Canada is seeing an average growth rate of 1.2 per cent. Our population is now 35.14 million people, give or take.
If the rest of the world follows suit and affluence results in decreases in birth rate, the world's population should stabilize around 2050 reaching somewhere close to 11 billion people. There are a lot of assumptions in that number - including the presumption that the world doesn't get into another continent spanning war or suffer massive famine or disease or ... well, let's just say that there are a lot of assumptions in that number.
What will Canada look like in 40 years?
We will have a population close to 60 million. British Columba will have a population of seven million. And Prince George might finally breakthrough the 100,000 barrier!
At a provincial level, the government is predicting most of the immigrants to British Columbia will settle in the lower mainland or Vancouver Island. Kelowna and the Okanagan valley is another hot spot. But Prince George is not a likely destination for incoming immigrants.
Unless we change.
Increasing the population of our city is critical. This was a point made by both mayoral candidates in the recent municipal election. They were talking about growth not just for growth sake. Our economy is predicated on continual growth.
We need more people to pay taxes for the services we want. We need more working aged individuals to pay for the replacement of infrastructure. We need more families for our school system to remain viable.
More importantly, we need to be able to take advantage of the jobs the B.C. economy will gain over the next decade.
The government's Skills for Jobs Blueprint and the Jobs Plan predict that there will be a million job openings in the province by 2022. The majority will be replacement for retiring workers but about a third will be new jobs required by economic growth.
However, in the same time period, B.C. high schools will only graduate about 530,000 students. The shortfall will be on the order of 470,000 workers. To put it simply, the province needs to increase its population by at least that many people over the next eight years if it is to meet the growing demand.
Further, the employment participation rate for the population as a whole is 59.2 per cent. To get 470,000 workers, we will need to increase our population by 794,000 people. That is almost 100,000 immigrants per year.
Most of these people - 75 per cent or so - will move to the Lower Mainland. That still leaves 200,000 people for the rest of the province. Is it not reasonable to expect some of these workers to end up in Prince George?
We need to find ways of attracting people to our town. More industry would seem to be an answer but realistically could we add another pulp mill? Saw mill? Refinery? I would respectfully suggest that the answer is "no".
Instead, if we want our fair share of jobs and growth, we need to find ways to diversify our economic base. Not just "call centres" but technology companies, manufacturing plants, and international education. These are the growth areas that will bring along development and new workers.
We can't simply be a lumber town anymore. To get to the next phase of growth, we need to take advantage of much more.
Growth in population is essential if we want to have a growing economy. A growing economy is essential if we want to maintain the affluence we now enjoy.
Over the next decade, we need to shoot for way more than 100,000 people.
