Wild west not so wild any more, report finds

This is from the Vancouver Sun. The rate of economic growth has until recently left Saskatchewan behind but lately it is growing quite quickly and Manitoba
is the slow grower. However, I have no idea how this correlates with quality of life. I am quite happy to be in a declining backwater in Manitoba. The cost of living allows us to live a comfortable life on a quite moderate income. In one of the booming western cities we could not afford a decent place to stay! The fact that the West is booming and urbanising does not mean the wild west is still not here.
Consider these statistics from cbc.
"Rural areas of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta had the highest homicide rates in the country, the study suggests. ..... Overall, the highest crime rates were reported in the small urban areas of the western provinces — British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The lowest rates were observed in rural areas of Quebec, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and New Brunswick."

Compared to those huge effete eastern cities such as Toronto the Good and the poverty stricken bucolic subsistence farmers and fisherfolk of the Maritimes we in the western rural boondocks are lawless, gun toting, barbarians.







Wednesday » March 26 » 2008

Wild west not so wild any more, report finds
Canada's four western provinces now more urbanized, less of a hinterland, economist says

Kelly Cryderman
Canwest News Service


Wednesday, March 26, 2008


Canada's four western provinces are moving beyond their frontier past and becoming increasingly urbanized societies, set to attract as many as three million more people through interprovincial and international migration in the next 25 years, according to a new report.

"Quite a bit of activity in Canada has shifted to the west," said Brett Gartner, senior economist for the Canada West Foundation and author of the State of the West.

"I think the old hinterland thing is in the past."

The Canada West Foundation report, set to be released officially today, is a snapshot of demographic and economic trends in an area the foundation calls both a region and a set of distinctive provinces.

Looking at statistics from the four provinces, the report found the west's unemployment rate is lower than in the rest of Canada, B.C.'s unemployment rate has plummeted and Alberta alone was responsible for one-quarter of the new jobs in Canada over the past two years.

In demographics, Gartner found that interprovincial migration -- mostly to B.C. and Alberta -- has led to the lion's share of growth in the west, with the four provinces attracting 629,000 more Canadians than they lost between 1972 and 2007.

While each of the provinces had roughly the same share of Western Canada's population in 1931, it's projected the two westernmost provinces will account for 80 per cent of the region's population by 2031.

"Alberta's share is projected to remain constant, making B.C. the driver behind this increase," the report said.

Westerners do not seem to be shy about moving around.

B.C. has gained people in each of the past four years after losing population from 1998 to 2003.

In 2007, Saskatchewan gained people from interprovincial migration for the first time since 1984.

Manitoba has experienced a net loss of people to other provinces for the past two dozen years, although those losses have been offset by strong immigration, thanks in part to a strong provincial nominee program, which targets immigrants with specific skills and expedites their entry into Canada.

No matter where you go in western Canada, you're more likely now to be touring skyscrapers and freeways than fields of grain and mining operations. The region is still sparsely populated by world standards -- 3.5 people per square kilometre compared to 31.3 in the U.S. -- however there has been what Gartner calls an "astounding" level of urbanization in the West. The rest of Canada was more urbanized than the West in 1966, the regions are more or less equally urbanized today. Now, four in five westerners live in cities.

Saskatchewan has probably suffered the most from rural depopulation, with 148,000 fewer people living in rural Saskatchewan in 2006 than 30 years earlier. In contrast, B.C. and Alberta gained rural residents.

But Glenn Blakley, president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, sees changes on the horizon. In the last 10 months, people who couldn't afford housing in Saskatchewan's rapidly growing cities are buying homes and vacant lots in smaller, sometimes rural communities, Blakley said.

"We've actually turned the corner on it," he said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2008








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