The Big Atlantic Canada Statistics Thread

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by David_99

Do the population estimates for individual cities come out in February?

Yes, subprovincial numbers are released in February. That will include CMAs, Economic Regions, and Provincial Subdivisions (counties). They usually include population estimates, factors in population change (migration, natural change, etc.), as well as median ages and such.

This will be the first release since StatCan updated their population estimates following the 2016 Census and added a few thousand people to NB/NS/PEI, so it will be interesting to see which areas in NB/NS received the additional numbers and which didn't.

[MonctonRad]

Can't wait!!

[pierremoncton]

This Is New Brunswick’s Population Conundrum In Six Charts by David Campbell

On Huddle: https://huddle.today/this-is-new-bru...in-six-charts/

Or the blog post (same content): http://davidwcampbell.com/2019/01/ne...-seven-charts/

[MonctonRad]

Excellent summary!

[JHikka]

NB's writers on this subject seem to like to worry and scare people as much as possible - I suppose that's the best way to get people to pay attention. Yes NB has a significant demographic challenge, and yes there are going to be growing pains, but some of this has already been addressed. International immigration has increased in recent years, interprovincial numbers have improved (something Campbell wants to loop into four-year cycles on his graph...), and the population on the whole has been increasing.

Here's NB's interprovincial net migration figure for each year for the past decade:

2008: -908
2009: -237
2010: +571
2011: -158
2012: -1,806
2013: -3,290
2014: -3,517
2015: -2,790
2016: -1,113
2017: +434
2018: -49

So, five bad years and now two good/flat years, which is an improvement. This figure should improve as Canada's larger population centres (Vancouver, Toronto) become more unaffordable for many.

Although the population figures used in the article are census figure, recent estimates put out last week by StatCan have NB's population at 770K, a 4K increase over the previous year. 2018 will be the third year in a row with population growth in NB.

Campbell's best point is on the rural/urban split in NB and how the province made little headway on urban growth in the previous three decades. If we breakdown NB population figures we can see (as i've posted numerously before) that NB's three cities have been growing at pretty good rates as the rural areas have been draining out. Essentially, even though NB's population is aging, it's becoming easier to service that older population as more people are living in fewer areas. That is to say, it's easier to serve 5,000 people living in a more dense area than 1,000 people in a less dense area.

NB's oldest areas are the rural areas which make up the glut of NB's oldest population cohort. I'm not a professional on this so I can't really provide any hard insight but I imagine the more people in NB's three cities and fewer in the rural areas the easier it becomes to deal with NB's impending labour and age issues. Bigger cities are also a better draw for international and interprovincial migrants.

We'll have a better idea of where this population growth is occurring when the new subprovincial population numbers for 2018 are released in a few weeks.

[MonctonRad]

Since this is the statistics thread, I thought I would put this here too:

Office Vacancy Rates in Atlantic Canada (according to Huddle)
https://huddle.today/fredericton-mon...vacancy-rates/

Fredericton - 7.05%
Charlottetown - 7.59%
Moncton - 8.02%
Halifax - 13.86%
St. John's - 17.21%
Saint John - 19.10%

More importantly for Moncton, the vacancy rate for "Class A" office space is now a rock bottom 3.36%, which is considered to be essentially full occupancy.

I would think this should augur well for new commercial office development in downtown Moncton, and in particular, I would hope this should give the green light to the refurbishment of 1222 Main.

[KnoxfordGuy]

Random thought...Atlantic Canadas biggest cities (St. John's, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton) combined population of CA/CMA is over 1.1 million people. Ok. Back to your lives lol

[Taeolas]

Originally Posted by KnoxfordGuy

Random thought...Atlantic Canadas biggest cities (St. John's, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton) combined population of CA/CMA is over 1.1 million people. Ok. Back to your lives lol

Don't forget Sydney/Cape Breton Regional Municipality. It's a hair under 100k (probably more hairs now) but still significantly bigger than Charlottetown (68-70k).

Everyone else is under the 50k point so can be ignored. (The next biggest in each province is: Truro is at 45k, Bathurst at 31k and Cornerbrook at 32k).

* Numbers from the 2016 census listed on the Wiki page.

[JHikka]

Combining St. John's with the rest of the Maritime CMAs/CAs seems a bit silly to me given how separated it is from the rest. At least with the others you can sort of create a corridor-like zone of growth stretching from Fredericton to Halifax...St. John's can't really be a part of that.

[NBNYer]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

Don't forget Sydney/Cape Breton Regional Municipality. It's a hair under 100k (probably more hairs now) but still significantly bigger than Charlottetown (68-70k).

Everyone else is under the 50k point so can be ignored. (The next biggest in each province is: Truro is at 45k, Bathurst at 31k and Cornerbrook at 32k).

* Numbers from the 2016 census listed on the Wiki page.

Poor Cape Breton often gets overlooked.

[Taeolas]

It all depends on what you are counting. If you are looking at an Urban region in total, then the Freddy/SJ/Moncton/(Truro)/Halifax/Charlottetown/(New Glasgow) region does flow together mostly and Saint John's is an odd ball out. (As is Sydney)

If you're just looking for a count of Urban vs Rural/less urban Atlantic Canadians, then including Saint John's in the count does work.

In any case, without Saint John's but with Sydney (and especially with the rest of the CAs), we still get around 1M urbanites in the Maritimes. And the NB Tri-cities are only about 40k off from Halifax by itself.

[OliverD]

*St. John's *St. John's *St. John's

[MonctonRad]

In the absence of a truly dominant regional city (like Toronto in Ontario or Winnipeg in Manitoba), the Maritimes will have to make do with a "central regional growth corridor"

This will encompass the three major NB cities, central PEI including Charlottetown, and the TCH/102 corridor in NS stretching to Halifax (and including the northern Annapolis Valley). A spur also including New Glasgow and Antigonish also seems appropriate.

Happily this corridor is essentially geographically contiguous and mostly connected by the region's freeway system and the CNR. This is where the region's growth will occur in the future (sorry Cape Breton).

[Taeolas]

The spur with Antigonish/New Glasgow works when you include PEI, since the Ferry connection is still there; so it keeps things contiguous that way, and you get a loop from Moncton to Charlottetown to New Glasgow/Pictou to Truro and back to Moncton.

Much like Southern Ontario has the golden horseshoe and Ontario/Quebec has the 401 Corridor (or the QC to Windsor corridor), the Freddy to New Glasgow to Halifax stretch is our (much MUCH smaller scale) corridor. A corridor that leaves out Northern NB and Cape Breton and much of southern NS sadly.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

The spur with Antigonish/New Glasgow works when you include PEI, since the Ferry connection is still there; so it keeps things contiguous that way, and you get a loop from Moncton to Charlottetown to New Glasgow/Pictou to Truro and back to Moncton.

Much like Southern Ontario has the golden horseshoe and Ontario/Quebec has the 401 Corridor (or the QC to Windsor corridor), the Freddy to New Glasgow to Halifax stretch is our (much MUCH smaller scale) corridor. A corridor that leaves out Northern NB and Cape Breton and much of southern NS sadly.

I'd be more willing to include both the Moncton -> Fredericton corridor as well as a Moncton -> Saint John corridor only because the population mass between the latter is much higher than the former. Once you branch off in Salisbury there's very little on Route 2 until one gets to Jemseg or so when heading towards Fredericton. The Route 1 corridor between Saint John and Moncton has a pretty consistent population base by comparison which would include Hampton and Sussex along with commuter SJ communities. Towns like Hampton/Sussex are more-or-less holding steady population wise (or are increasing in some circumstances) which isn't too bad for rural Maritimes.

This is beside the fact that Saint John CMA has a higher population count than Fredericton CA (for the time being, anyway) and is still seeing reasonable growth in its CMA figures.

[someone123]

People tend to forget about other parts of central NS. Kings County is more densely populated than the Fredericton CMA. The Kings-Hants electoral district is pretty close to Fredericton in size/density and most of those people are within an hour of Halifax. The Truro CA is 45,000.

About 1/3 of the population of the Maritimes is in central NS. It's not really that far off from the Toronto-Ontario ratio. Halifax is about 3x Moncton and Toronto is about 4x Ottawa.

Likewise Halifax is about as large compared to the next largest cities as Boston is in New England. Boston is 4.6 million and Providence is 1.6 million. The idea that New England has a primate city is not very controversial.

[Taeolas]

Yeah, Freddy is somewhat isolated, but still part of our Economic growth region; just on the edge of it. (Woodstock is where I'd put the upper edge of it).

Looking at the map, CFB Gagetown is probably the main blockade you have from the Freddy region and the rest of the Maritimes. It cuts off the urban growth path towards Moncton and towards SJ. If it didn't exist, I could see steady village and town growth filling in between Cambridge Narrows and Oromocto and Oromocto and Geary and along Route 1.

From Cambridge-narrows/Coles Island, the development route basically should duck down to Sussex, then head to Moncton via Salisbury. Basically the entire lower SJ river should be a village/town/city region, linked via Sussex to Moncton.

But that's the past, and we've got what we've got.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by someone123

Likewise Halifax is about as large compared to the next largest cities as Boston is in New England. Boston is 4.6 million and Providence is 1.6 million. The idea that New England has a primate city is not very controversial.

Halifax is the closest thing we have to a primate city, but HRM still only has about 24% of the Maritime's population (compare this to Winnipeg which has over 50% of Manitoba's population or Vancouver CMA which has about 45% of BC's population.

Halifax CMA is about 2.8X the Moncton CMA. The three main cities in NB total about 395,000 or about 90% of Halifax's population. Halifax is big, but geography and political boundaries prevent it from having complete domination over the Maritimes.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

From Cambridge-narrows/Coles Island, the development route basically should duck down to Sussex, then head to Moncton via Salisbury. Basically the entire lower SJ river should be a village/town/city region, linked via Sussex to Moncton.

But that's the past, and we've got what we've got.

Yes, the new alignment for the TCH definitely should have been closer to Sussex. There is a natural population corridor there. The current alignment is through the wilderness.

[OliverD]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Yes, the new alignment for the TCH definitely should have been closer to Sussex. There is a natural population corridor there. The current alignment is through the wilderness.

That population corridor is pretty tiny in the grand scheme of things, and still exists as part of the Saint John to Moncton corridor. The current alignment is fine and is preferred for the vast majority of TCH traffic (little of which is going to Sussex or Petitcodiac).