The Big Atlantic Canada Statistics Thread

[Bishop2047]

https://huddle.today/n-b-sees-most-c...istics-canada/

Employment in NB is 96.6% of the February numbers. Canada is 93 percent. Both are good looking.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Bishop2047

Employment in NB is 96.6% of the February numbers. Canada is 93 percent. Both are good looking.

So far the economic damage seems far milder than what was feared back in March. This is also true of the US numbers. I believe this is because of a good combination of rapid government intervention to put money in the hands of the unemployed coupled with the tech economy which happens to require less in person contact. I predict that CERB will be seen as a successful experiment in direct transfers to individuals.

It'll be interesting to see how much of an effect government spending has on future budgets. I don't think it will be a big crisis, but in Canada we were in deficit spending (target shifted to stable debt-to-GDP instead of balanced budgets) even back when the economy was doing well. I do not think that we can handle these shocks indefinitely while also overspending during the good years.

[MonctonRad]

Q3 2020 Population Estimates from Statistics Canada (Q3 Estimates from 2019 for Comparison)

1) - NS - 979,351 (969,747), +9,604
2) - NB - 781,476 (776,868), +4,608
3) - NL - 522,103 (523,476), -1,373
4) - PE - 159,625 (157,262), +2,363

Atlantic Canada - 2,442,555 (2,427,353), +15,202

And here is an interesting stat from zahav in the Canada section. Only three provinces had net positive interprovincial migration in the last quarter. These were:

BC +7,940
NS +1,443
NB +310

The numbers for NB & NS are gratifying and it is interesting to speculate what may be going on here. If one wants to be pessimistic, this may simply reflect the fact that the economy in the rest of Canada is in the toilet right now, and this may just reflect people returning home because they can't find work elsewhere but, perhaps this stat is actually positive and reflects that the Atlantic Bubble has kept us safe, and our economy here is better than in the rest of Canada, and people are moving here to take advantage of it.

[Nashe]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

...perhaps this stat is actually positive and reflects that the Atlantic Bubble has kept us safe, and our economy here is better than in the rest of Canada, and people are moving here to take advantage of it.

I know of at least a half dozen people in ON right now who have sold (or are selling) their houses to move to either NB or NS. They were THINKING about it because of the real estate situation (they can sell there and buy something here nearly entirely with cash) before, but COVID has pushed them into actually acting.

[Taeolas]

Wow, if Nova Scotia can keep anywhere close to that growth for another 3 years, it'll break the 1M point. Hell, it should be breaking 1M within the next 5 years or so even if it has a growth rate a portion of that rate.

Over the same time, it should see NB crack 800k as well.

PEI isn't getting near any particular milestone in that time period, but it's still seeing steady good growth. It might be big enough for its own Costco within 5 years.

[KnoxfordGuy]

The milestone for PEI could be Charlottetown becoming a CMA. But that is not for a decade atleast.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by KnoxfordGuy

The milestone for PEI could be Charlottetown becoming a CMA. But that is not for a decade atleast.

Probably another two census cycles (2021 & 2026) if Charlottetown holds onto its current rate of growth. I'd look for it to get CMA status in 2031, depending on if other smaller towns and neighbouring communities are added to its CA. I know there was a bit of CA juggling in 2016 for the city.

[MonctonRad]

The Canadian Real Estate Association has announced their five hottest housing markets in Canada, based on year-over-year increase in housing prices.

The five cities are:

1) - Ottawa (19.9%)
2) - Montreal (16.4%)
3) - Niagara Region (15.3%)
4) - Guelph (14.3%)
5) - Moncton (12.5%)

Housing sales in September in greater Moncton were up 45% compared to the same month the previous year. The greatest demand in Moncton is for houses less than $300,000, but luxury home sales are also spiking. According to one real estate agent, the majority of his clients are moving to the region from Toronto, but with significant inflow from Halifax as well. This is because of real estate value in greater Moncton. Also, the pandemic has pushed a lot of people to realize that they can indeed work remotely, and it is possible to live in Moncton, but keep your job in Toronto.

The real estate agent's statement jives with this post by Vorkuta from further up the thread:

Originally Posted by Vorkuta

I know of at least a half dozen people in ON right now who have sold (or are selling) their houses to move to either NB or NS. They were THINKING about it because of the real estate situation (they can sell there and buy something here nearly entirely with cash) before, but COVID has pushed them into actually acting.

[Taeolas]

Was visiting family in Cape Breton over the weekend, and one of the things we talked about, is how Sydney/CBRM seems to be turning the corner and finally growing again. Apparently the housing market in Sydney is as hot as the NB TriCities. The new community college campus downtown is going to help with the city growth too.

I didn't look far enough back in this thread to find the population numbers so I can't really confirm. But I'd dare say we could see Sydney and Charlottetown in a race to become the next CMA in the Maritimes. Especially if Sydney can keep focusing on densification projects like the college.

[MonctonRad]

CBRM needs a POPCTR of 50,000 for CMA status, and since Sydney itself is only about 33,000, they have a long way to go. CBRM has an overall population advantage on Charlottetown, but the population is way too distributed. I'm pretty sure Charlottetown will win this race...…….

[Taeolas]

True, it wouldn't be easy; but as you said, Sydney has the population but doesn't have the density, while Charlottetown has the density but doesn't have the population. So we'll see if luring in more people is easier than getting people to live closer together.

In Sydney's case, if they can set some neighbourhoods to start building some taller apartment/condo blocks and bring in more units within the core that would certainly help.

In any case, at this point in time, it feels like we have 4 major population/stats milestones to aim for. (Roughly in order of when they'll be reached):

1. Nova Scotia hits 1M people.
2. New Brunswick hits 800,000 people.
3. Charlottetown becomes a CMA.
4. Sydney/CBRM becomes a CMA.

That's probably a 20-year 'plan', beyond which I don't know what goals/targets might be reachable.

[someone123]

The 50,000 population centre sounds objective but you can get wildly different results depending on how the borders are drawn. I am not sure what the borders look like inside CBRM. The census divisions around metro Halifax are wacky, with some suburbs being sliced in half while others encompass huge empty areas. They are what they are for arbitrary historical reasons.

I always thought of CBRM as a declining place but this was in the context of the aftermath of steel mill and coal industry shutdowns. That has all played out now. In principle it's not really that different from any number of other towns around the country, but with better than average local scenery and cheap real estate. Its biggest challenge is that it's so remote. The closest comparable places are probably the closer parts of Northern Ontario (e.g. North Bay or Sudbury), but Sydney has a more temperate climate.

[Smevo]

Originally Posted by someone123

The 50,000 population centre sounds objective but you can get wildly different results depending on how the borders are drawn. I am not sure what the borders look like inside CBRM. The census divisions around metro Halifax are wacky, with some suburbs being sliced in half while others encompass huge empty areas. They are what they are for arbitrary historical reasons.

...

There were several boundary changes to the areas population centres in at least the last two censuses that definitely seemed arbitrary, at least on the surface. Combined, CBRM has over 70k within "population centres", but this is split up in 4 different centres, all within what would be otherwise considered the CMA boundaries (Sydney ~33k, Glace Bay ~20K, North Sydney/Sydney Mines ~15k, New Waterford just under 10k).

It sounds simple enough to attract more of the internal population into Sydney to get to the 50k threshold, but there's a level of neighbourhood pride in the area that in some cases is as specific as the street you grew up on, which makes this more challenging with the short commute times between population centres. This also is slowly changing, but is still very evident overall.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Charlottetown "won the race" on this, even with what appears to be an easier route for Sydney including the feeling of a turning of the corner of sorts with respect to the economy and the area's population.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Smevo

It sounds simple enough to attract more of the internal population into Sydney to get to the 50k threshold, but there's a level of neighbourhood pride in the area that in some cases is as specific as the street you grew up on, which makes this more challenging with the short commute times between population centres. This also is slowly changing, but is still very evident overall.

I wonder if a small amount of development between say Sydney and Glace Bay could cause them to be counted as a single population centre. There isn't much of an actual gap in development along this area, with both CBU and the airport being in the middle. It is clearly a metro area with shared regional amenities and not just separate towns.

[Taeolas]

As I mentioned before, when talking with my cousin, it seems Sydney is having a housing crunch similar to Freddy and Moncton. (In many ways Sydney and SJ are twins, both in their troubles and how they are trying to turn around).

I think ultimately, Sydney's best route is to encourage density. Get some 5-6 story residential buildings within the Sydney boundaries, and that will help densify the city itself. They need ~17k people, which is a lot. But if they can add 500-800 units a year, that would only be a decade or two to reach the goal. So CMA status could happen within 25 years maybe with the right planning and pushes.

[Smevo]

Originally Posted by someone123

I wonder if a small amount of development between say Sydney and Glace Bay could cause them to be counted as a single population centre. There isn't much of an actual gap in development along this area, with both CBU and the airport being in the middle. It is clearly a metro area with shared regional amenities and not just separate towns.

Potentially, but that's up to the number-crunchers at Stats-Can. What's kind of silly, as expensive as it would be, is if Sydney and North Sydney or Sydney Mines were connected directly via a bridge, it would likely be considered as one population center already. Currently it's a 15-20 minute drive on Hwy 125 around the harbour, vs what would likely be 1-2 minutes across a bridge. The side benefit of not having one is there's no height restriction on ships entering the port.

It's not something that will happen in any version of the forseeable future, but still kinda fun to think about.

One thing that confused me about the boundary changes is that it looked like they removed growing areas on the outskirst to combine them with the adjacent rural area. It sounds like something similar happened with Halifax from your previous post.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Smevo

One thing that confused me about the boundary changes is that it looked like they removed growing areas on the outskirst to combine them with the adjacent rural area. It sounds like something similar happened with Halifax from your previous post.

In metro Halifax the commuter shed extends beyond the northern and western boundary of the municipality, but then the eastern boundary extends about a full hour beyond. So it is a mix of restricted and overly expansive boundaries.

This matters because Hants County suburbs are excluded from regional planning for example while far east Halifax County is truly rural and has different concerns from the city.

Part of Hants is being added to the Halifax CMA for 2021. That part of Hants has about as many residents as the eastern 2/3 of the land area in the Halifax CMA.

It looks to me like CBRM doesn't really have this although there's a hard cutoff around the south of the municipality, which I'd guess is where it butts up against other municipalities or counties with significant population. There is a tendency to amalgamate LESS developed areas together which tends to exclude satellite towns and suburbs. The population centres for Statistics Canada don't necessarily match these although I think CBRM would probably be one census division, and the other adjacent census divisions would have to qualify as a whole to be added to the CA/CMA. So a metro can be "undersized" if it is adjacent to a really big census division that has some commuters and a lot of non-commuters.

[Smevo]

You're right, we don't have what you describe. There's a small amount of spillover into Victoria County on the NW boundary around Millville, but even that isn't really dense enough to be truly "suburban".

What I'm talking about is the suburbs on the edges of the population centres. Some of the Dissemination Areas (I think that was the hierarchy, as I don't think there are Census Tracts available for the area) were realigned to cut through these suburbs, causing parts to be combined with the rural DA vs the DA included in the population centre. Whether these specific areas were growing or not, I'm not 100% sure, but the suburbs themselves were. At one point I saw which communities these included, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to find it again as there have been many updates to the website since.

[JHikka]

I could be wrong but StatCan takes a lot of their dissemination areas from whatever the local municipality limits are. Halifax CMA includes large swaths of eastern-nothingness because the RM of Halifax includes it. Likewise, Sydney's CA (Cape Breton CA) includes the entire area because the RGM of Cape Breton includes it. Because this is the base municipality level for census purposes i'm not sure how much that is affected by the commuter counting for outside areas. Charlottetown, IIRC, was much easier and standard because Charlottetown's base municipal level is more concentrated on the town itself, so outlying areas areas are easier to add or remove, and also makes a central hub for a potential future CMA much easier to identify.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by JHikka

I could be wrong but StatCan takes a lot of their dissemination areas from whatever the local municipality limits are. Halifax CMA includes large swaths of eastern-nothingness because the RM of Halifax includes it. Likewise, Sydney's CA (Cape Breton CA) includes the entire area because the RGM of Cape Breton includes it. Because this is the base municipality level for census purposes i'm not sure how much that is affected by the commuter counting for outside areas.

This is my understanding too. There's the concept of census divisions and combining those together into CMAs (and CAs?) and HRM or CBRM would count as one census division. Hants East is another one if I recall correctly (I don't know what the other CB ones are). The reserves seem to count as CDs and so you see them listed separately as parts of metro areas.

So it's really an NS question how the CDs are drawn out rather than something that Statistics Canada decides. In the case of the amalgamations, the province wanted to include some of the sparsely populated rural areas in with the regional municipalities in order to avoid having them as separate counties or municipalities that would struggle to fund themselves.