The capital city area is busy with construction underway this summer preparing portable classrooms to accomodate school enrollment that has doubled in several school districts.
Meanwhile, in the outport communities, the towns and villages along the extensive coastline, the young people continue to leave and the populations decline. Overall, deaths are still higher than births.
The offshore oil boom that began in the late 1990’s changed Newfoundland from a have-not province to a Canadian success story. But the young people are still leaving.
Lisa Dempster is the Liberal Member of the province’s House of Assembly and the Advanced Education and Skills critic. She represents Cartwright – L’Anse au Clair a remote riding in Labrador.
She says the province is losing its best and brightest, generally to the other oil-rich province of Alberta. Nearly 5,000 people have left Newfoundland in the last five years.
As in other areas of Canada, the province is facing the prospect of an aging population and increasing urbanization. Lisa Dempster says there are steps the government can take to reverse the trends.
Policies such as increased child-care spaces would help young families make a living and a life in Newfoundland. There are over 60,000 children under the age of 13, and only 8,000 licensed child-care spaces.
The government made a move to improve the situation somewhat, announcing a full-day kindergarten program, but it doesn’t begin until 2016.
Confidence in the future of the province is not very strong.1500 people left in the first quarter of 2014 according to Statistics Canada, many encouraged to do so to ensure they qualify in the trades they’ve chosen.
The province has bureaucratic snafus to iron out such as the inability of young apprentices to be able to qualify in their trade because the program is not being properly managed. Rich incentives for first year apprentices often leave second year people abandoned.
The Provinical Nominee program, a key element in most other province’s immigration strategy, can accomodate only 300 people a year. Lobbying the federal government to increase the number has not been a priority.
70,000 job openings by 2020 according to the Conference Board of Canada
Meanwhile, the Conference Board of Canada is predicting 70,000 job openings in just 6 years, due to the aging and retiring population.
Lisa Dempster says the government has to work to diversify the ecomomy with tax incentives for entrepreneurs and small business owners, and move from relying on mega-projects, such as the current Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project.
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