Should P.E.I. stop luring immigrants with housing and health care so pinched? Some say yes

As population growth continues to place a strain on health care and housing on Prince Edward Island, there are renewed calls for the provincial government to ease back on immigration programs to give services a chance to catch up.

For years, Canada's smallest province has had one of the fastest-growing populations in the country. The latest estimate from Statistics Canada showed P.E.I. growing at an annual rate of four per cent, with 175,853 residents as of Oct. 1, 2023.

In the past month, both the province's health minister and the outgoing head of the provincial health authority have spoken about the struggle of maintaining services in the face of population growth.

The most recent statistics on rental vacancies showed P.E.I. had the tightest provincial rental market in the country, with an apartment vacancy rate of less than one per cent. 

Housing starts are not keeping up with the minimum 2,000 units per year the province's housing minister has said are needed just to keep up with population growth.

There's nothing that can be done to place any limits on people moving to the Island from another part of Canada. But some are wondering why the province has been moving ahead full-steam with immigration programs, to encourage growth in the form of newcomers to Canada.

Ottawa's allocation of permanent resident nominations to the province has increased 92 per cent, from 1,070 in 2018 to 2,050 in 2023.

"We're inviting people into our province when there's no housing for people who are here or people who are coming in," said interim Green Party Leader Karla Bernard.

"There's no health care for people who are here or people coming in. …So for now, all of these aggressive programs that we've designed, that governments have designed to get people to come here — we need to just kind of slow those down until we can get things caught up."

But there seems to be little appetite from the government to scale back on immigration programs, which are providing a fresh supply of workers to Island businesses, boosting the provincial economy, and trending the province toward younger demographics.

"We want to ensure we have workers that will fill the workforce," P.E.I.'s Minister of Workforce, Advanced Learning and Population Jenn Redmond said back in June, when the topic of curbing immigration was raised in the legislature.

"People want to be here. They're choosing P.E.I. for a reason," Premier Dennis King said in a year-end interview with CBC News.

"I guess if there's problems to have, those are the good problems, or the good challenges to have."

The latest breakdown of population growth from Statistics Canada shows P.E.I. gained 3,116 immigrants in 2022-2023, and saw a net increase in non-permanent residents – those in the province on student or work visas – of 2,098.