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Originally Posted by Repthe250
Reducing the number of immigrants or TFW’s doesn’t make a population decline. It would slow it, but not decrease it. Unless we’re deporting.
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We removed 22,000 people from the country in 2025, but that's not the main reason for the population of the country (and BC) falling. In Q1 2026 81,380 non-permanent residents arrived in Canada. (That's students and TFWs). But 199,259 left the country as their visas expired. So that's a net loss of 117,879 temporary residents in just one quarter. In 2024 there were 3.1 million non-permanent residents in the country, and by April 2026 that was 2.56 million, and falling.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Repthe250
The fact that Kelowna doesn’t have any jobs, or any big industry other than wine could be solved by making the region more accessible to outside markets. One bridge that funnels all truck traffic thru an urban centre with a 50km hr speed limit doesn’t help. Adding a second bridge with a bypass connecting the industrial parks north of town to the Westside of Okanagan Lake certainly would. Like I said there is no intermodal connection to the Okanagan. Everything is trucked in and out. If the region wants to grow and prosper and add jobs, this needs to be addressed. Highway 97 and the bridge is already at max capacity, and my MIL just got denied a job in west Kelowna (she lives in Rutland and on EI, which runs out next month) because she lives on the other side of the bridge and every day there is an issue. This region can’t function this way much longer.
But like I said, I’m just beating a dead horse here. We, who live in Kelowna, know this already.
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There's a technical recession. The Province is running a record deficit. Kelowna needs road infrastructure. Burnaby needs a new hospital. UBC needs a SkyTrain.
Under the current NDP government Capital Spending was $10.38bn in 2024/25. The last BC LIberal government in 2016/17 spent $3.7bn - which would be $4.7bn accounting for inflation from then to 2025. So the current government are spending more than double the last BC Liberal government, on capital expenditure.
That included $3bn spent by BC Transportation Financing Authority in 2024/25, funding roads, bridges and transit capital expenditure. The last Liberal budget in 2016/17 spent $861m on their projects. Adjusted for inflation, that would have been $1.1bn in 2025 dollars. So the province is currently spending almost three times more on roads, bridges and transit than the BC Liberals did.
They're also spending three times more on capital expenditure for BC Transit, and two and a half times as much on new health facilities and on social housing, and twice as much on new schools and seismic upgrades to old ones.
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