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Originally Posted by vid
We don't need population growth to be economically viable, but we do need a decent amount of people between 18 and 40 and a reliable supply of jobs. Honestly, if the population were to drop a little, but most people were reasonably well employed and satisfied, I'd say the city would be doing better in that scenario than one where the population is growing, but jobs are scarce and quality of life is low. I think the city is doing a fair amount of effort into ensuring the former: simply maintain the labour force and jobs, maintain the population to 110,000 (+/- 5,000), and work on improving local cultural amenities to make life enjoyable here. In an ideal situation, we would only really need to bring people in to replace skilled workers that have retired that the local market can't supply.
Long story short: I think based on the big picture the region isn't terribly fucked, we just need a bit of creativity and should focus on maintaining the population and improving quality of life over growing the population at any expense.
We do have to accept that some of the smaller towns are going to become obsolete and become ghost towns (it happens, look at Jackfish), but at the same time, those towns can become specialized (like Nipigon-Red Rock and Elliot Lake as retirement communities, Kenora as a cottage country) or reinvigorated (like Red Lake with Goldcorp and Terrace Bay or White River with their sawmills). We can't be propping up small communities with no viable industry, so we have to find ways to make them viable or find a way to "retire" them without hurting the few people who remain.
It's going to be interesting, once later census reports are released, to see how many people have moved to new communities within Northern Ontario. Because we've seen a lot of communities shrink and a lot of them grow, often in strange patterns where the two are beside each other (Nipigon-Red Rock and Schreiber-Terrace Bay) where one grew and the other shrank, and I have a feeling that it's a result of people within Northern Ontario following jobs around.
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Well said.
As for stats in places like White River or whatnot, outside of a 20% increase or decrease in population, I don't read into it much. The lower the overall population, the more errors in enumeration show up. To miss a few people in a census is White River is huge, while in Thunder Bay, not so much.
As for Northern Ontario overall, I feel we're coming close to equilibrium. It's not the 1990s where the population is collapsing, which is an improvement.
I am somewhat concerned at the age structure in Northern Ontario - we're pretty heavily loaded towards the Boomers and experiencing a notable decline in children. However, I am noticing young people from other parts of the country considering moving here, especially in specialized fields, so I consider that an optimistic sign that we're shedding the 'trees and rocks' image we have in other parts of the country.
Gazing into my (often wrong) crystal ball, I'll try my hand at prediction. I think places that are regional centres will continue to do well (Sudbury and Thunder Bay) due to the draw they have from other areas. Smaller places connected to the gold industry will outperform those who are dependent on other base metals. The weakest areas will be those who cater to the forestry and retirement communities.