It’s not a sale on corn or blueberries advertised on the grocery store road sign in St. Stephen, N.B. Instead, spelled out in bright, bold letters, is the notice “hiring in all departments.”
“In the old days, you know, boy, people would be lining up for those jobs. It used to be very difficult to find jobs around there,” Francis McGuire, president of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, said Tuesday. “Now they can’t fill the jobs.”
The sign highlights the acute labour shortages facing businesses in New Brunswick, the only province in Canada to record a drop in population over a five-year period, according to the 2016 census.
The troubling population decrease has prompted New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant to create a new cabinet portfolio focusing on population growth, part of a major cabinet shuffle unveiled Tuesday in the leadup to next year’s provincial election.
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Outside of New Brunswick’s urban centres, the population decline is pronounced. Towns like St. Stephen dwindled by more than eight per cent while some rural areas experienced double-digit population declines.
Gallant said the new portfolio of labour, employment and population growth will ensure the province has the workforce it needs to grow the economy.
“This will help strengthen our workforce and grow our population which will combat our most significant challenge: an aging population,” he said.
According to provincial statistics, there were almost 141,000 students in New Brunswick schools in 1991. Last year that number was about 98,000 students.
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Last month, Gallant was enthusiastic when it became clear the Education Department missed its cost-reduction targets – because the influx of 650 Syrian refugees stemmed the steady decline in student enrolment.
“It is good to have more people,” Gallant said then.
Gallant named Gilles LePage, a backbencher from the northern New Brunswick Restigouche West riding, minister of labour, employment and population growth.
The aim to grow the population is coupled with a renewed focus on job creation in the province’s traditional industries through the second new portfolio of agriculture, mines and rural affairs.
“To continue to grow the New Brunswick economy, we must consistently work at growing our population and workforce, and we must support industries that are in rural New Brunswick,” Gallant said.
The demographic crunch of low birth rates, youth out-migration and an aging population is playing out across Atlantic Canada.
Herb Emery, the University of New Brunswick’s Vaughan Chair in Regional Economics, said many rural regions in Canada are struggling with a static or shrinking population.
“Fertility rates started to collapse after 1965 down to below replacement,” he said. “The challenge has always been how do you reverse that and one answer is natural resource development.”
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Emery said natural resource development attracts investment, causes in-migration and sparks population growth.
He pointed to the shale gas boom in Pennsylvania as an example of population growth spurred by development.
“The fracking boom in the U.S. is thought to have had a positive impact on fertility rates because younger people with higher incomes tended to pair up,” Emery said. “If you have high youth unemployment, people tend to delay marriage and delay fertility.”
Citing public opposition, the New Brunswick government announced in 2016 that it would keep a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in place indefinitely.
McGuire, former head of Major Drilling Group International, said the labour shortage has been a growing issue in the private sector.
He said companies are facing challenges recruiting workers, caused by both demographic challenges and a “skills mismatch.”
“The provincial government is listening to what the private sector has been saying for a couple years. We just can’t find people.”
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