[GernB]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Kingston has a massive demographic impact from this. The city's population is 124,000 in the census, but if students who live here during the academic year only were counted, the number would be 135,000, a difference of almost 10%. Those 11,000 extra people pretty much live entirely in the downtown core of the city.

This created political controversy the last time the city drew its ward boundaries, as the city initially used only the census data in the redistribution resulting in the suburbs gaining one extra council seat at the expense of the downtown area. The student council and downtown community groups took the city to court over it, who ruled that even though students are not enumerated in the census, because they use city services and pay municipal taxes, they are entitled to representation, and ordered the city to factor in the extra 11,000 people when drawing ward borders. This allowed the downtown area to keep its council seats.

The situation is similar in Lethbridge. The city's official population is expected to top 100,000 (just barely) this year, but if out-of-town students from the U of L and LC are included it would be approximately 110,000. Not a huge absolute figure, but fairly large proportionately.