B.C.'s population grew by 70,000 last year
Credit to Author: Susan Lazaruk| Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 19:00:07 +0000
The population of B.C. continues to grow and it’s the city of Surrey leading the way.
B.C.’s population rose by more than 70,000 people last year, hitting 5,071,336 as of July 1, 2019 according to B.C. Statistics’ 2019 population estimates. This is an increase of 1.7 per cent over 2018.
Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum said he wasn’t surprised to see that B.C. Stats had pegged growth at 2.9 per cent in his city, which was the largest hike in the number of residents year over year of any single B.C. community, at 16,382 people.
“We thought we were growing at a rate of 1,000 a month but it’s more like 1,400 a month,” he said.
“We see growth as a good thing, as long as we keep up the infrastructure,” he said. “We recognized that we would have this growth and we got out in front of it.”
He said improvements in infrastructure includes the recently announced SkyTrain extension and the Pattullo Bridge repairs and, mentioning his pet project, the creation of “our own city police department.”
He said the city has three new ice rinks, a new community centre in Clayton and more than a dozen new schools. However, controversially, it has put some projects on hold to help fund the switch to a municipal police force.
The city has been building “a lot of affordable housing” and five to six modular buildings are in the works to provide housing for the homeless.
The Vancouver Island communities of Langford, Duncan and Colwood were the three fastest-growing large municipalities from 2018 to 2019. Langford grew 5.2 per cent between July 1, 2018 to July 1, 2019, or almost 2,100 people, Duncan by 3.7 per cent or 193 people, and Colwood by three per cent or 546 people, according to the provincial agency’s population estimates.
Half of the top 10 fastest-growing B.C. communities with a population of 5,000 or more were on Vancouver Island, including View Royal (2.5 per cent or 284 people) and Sooke (also 2.5 per cent or 357 people).
The other five in the top 10 growing communities were Whistler (2.9 per cent or 391), Surrey (also 2.9 per cent or 16,382), Chilliwack (2.6 per cent or 2,387), New Westminster (2.1 per cent or 1,631) and Merritt (also 2.1 per cent or 156).
The municipalities with the largest drops in population were Squamish, at a 2.9 per cent drop or 614 people, Kitimat (2.1 per cent, or 176 people) and Pitt Meadows, which lost 163 people (0.8 per cent of its population).
“When we saw the numbers, we called B.C. Stats to understand their methodology,” said Squamish Mayor Karen Elliott. “The evidence we have on the ground would suggest that we haven’t shrunk.”
She said residential vacancy rates are close to zero and local businesses are doing well.
“The real estate market has slowed somewhat but the new buildings are still being built,” she said.
She said B.C. Stats explained that it changed the data collection that relies on income tax returns, which could skew the numbers by not recording dependents or spouses if only one person in the household works.
B.C. Statistics didn’t return a request for comment.
Similarly in Pitt Meadows, Mayor Bill Dingwall said he couldn’t understand the slight dip in population because “anecdotally, we’re seeing a lot more cars on our streets.”
He said the loss in residents could be explained by the temporary loss of 32 townhouses in a building that was closed and is being replaced by a building with 220 units.
And he said official population figures also wouldn’t necessarily capture children returning to live with their parents or elderly parents coming to live with their children.
“I’m not really worried about those numbers showing us down 0.08 per cent,” he said. “By the end of 2020 (when the new townhouses get built), it will be a different story.”
Overall, almost 40,000 of new residents between 2018 and 2019 moved into the Metro Vancouver Regional District.
The fastest growing regional districts in the same time period were the Fraser Valley, at 1.2 per cent, and the Central Okanagan, at 1.9 per cent.
The biggest hikes, percentage-wise, were in the towns under 5,000, led by Sun Peaks Mountain (14.1 per cent), Tahsis (8.6 per cent) and Tofino (7.1 per cent). The two smaller municipalities with the largest drops were Port Clements (down 7.1 per cent) and Port Edward (down 4.7 per cent).