Edmundston deserves a chance to prosper, too

There was a great article in the Economist this week about population growth/decline in the United States. While the population is growing modestly nation wide through immigration, vast areas are in the midst of population decline. The article tells of a town that was thriving in the past but now has withered down to almost nothing - no gas stations, no grocery stores, etc.

The traditional view of many was that places boom or bust based on natural resources, geography, and other advantages. If you need people they will move to areas that are booming and from areas that are busting. The concept of people as the natural resource seems to have been ignored - of course with the huge exception of urban agglomerations which sold their talent pipeline as their most valuable resource.

The same way ACOA and other funding agencies were meant to fill a gap in the private markets for capital (under the argument that banks wouldn’t fund a business in small community x because the value of any assets would be lower there compared to large urban areas, a dubious proposition, IMO), we now think of people the same way (or should). If a place like Edmundston or Summerside or Stephenville doesn’t have enough people to meet workforce demand or new economic opportunities, we shouldn’t just throw up our hands and say, oh well, them’s the breaks.

We should see if people would be willing to move to Edmundston or Summerside or Stephenville - and it turns out the evidence on this is getting much stronger.

But, and this is a big but, if the big dogs still want high levels of immigration and international students, over time who do you think will suffer if we curtail the inflow of people similar to the USA? Toronto or Yarmouth?

The NB Premier is blaming the housing crisis on immigrants (he could have blamed migrants from Ontario just as easily) and now even federal politicians are getting into the blame game and indications are that Canadians are starting to blame immigrants too.

Again, I think it is highly appropriate and even necessary to set population growth targets - there is such a thing as too much growth - but these things need to be done logically and with the medium to long term outcomes front and centre.

Do we want to be a country that goes backwards? That becomes even worse when it comes to have and have not regions? How will that manifest itself in our democracy?

Immigrants aren’t the problem. They are part of the solution. We were just starting to get some traction - Edmundston had an immigration rate similar to Montreal in 2023 - but I worry this is about to change.