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Growing cities continue to be the biggest threat to Canada's towns

Funds follow the population, leaving small communities to fend for themselves

The Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership created a website designed to lure to their area retired Torontonians who are sick of the big city's traffic congestion.

Anyone who drives into Toronto along the Gardiner Expressway can see the signs. Condo buildings piercing the sky are popping up all along the route because Toronto's population is growing ... and at a staggering rate. Toronto's population has almost doubled in the past 30 years, and it's not the only Canadian city experiencing a population boom.

"Most of the growth is contained in a few places, obviously Vancouver, Toronto to a lesser extent Montreal, but then also Calgary and Edmonton," says Jason Hackworth, a professor of geography at the University of Toronto. "I think immigration has factored in enormously, especially in Toronto and Vancouver."

But much of the increase in population to Canada's major cities isn't coming from far-off lands; it's coming from the small towns that once dotted Canada's landscape. In the past three decades the population of many small towns, particularly in the Atlantic region, has plummeted.

Just as it's easy to see signs of growth in Toronto, it's easy to see signs of a shrinking populations in towns like Digby, NS, or Temiskaming, Ont.

According to Hackworth, there isn't a simple answer to why cities grow or decline. He says it has to do with a combination of economic synergy, luck, government decisions, wealth and the time period.

Hackworth attributes the most recent phase of Toronto's growth to the stability of the finance sector, the large number of government jobs that have existed for decades, immigration and migration from smaller towns in Ontario. He said people end up in Toronto upon graduation in search of jobs and opportunity.

Vancouver and Calgary have a lot of the same ingredients, even though no one can pinpoint an exact recipe.

It's a much more bleak picture in the U.S., especially in the plains of the U.S. where there is dramatic population decline — even worse than in Canada.

— Jason Hackworth, professor of geography at the University of Toronto

But Hackworth is currently looking at something many Canadian towns would be interested in — why populations decline. He says many of the classic examples — including Hamilton, Windsor, Detroit and Toledo — are large communities that were built around manufacturing and never changed with the times.

"The manufacturing that does take place requires fewer people," Hackworth says. "How and exactly why that happens varies considerably." If the centrepiece of an economy — whether it be a car assembly plant, a chocolate factory or a natural resource — goes away, it's generally bad news.

Former industrial towns aren't the only ones in steep decline. Hackworth also points to agricultural towns where machines can now do the job of dozens or hundreds of people, resulting in fewer jobs available in the town.

"It's a much more bleak picture in the U.S., especially in the plains of the U.S. where there is dramatic population decline — even worse than in Canada," he says.

Economist Fazley Siddiq agrees with Hackworth. In a recent paper on Canadian population trends, he writes that Canada's natural population is no longer growing and we increasingly rely on immigrants to maintain economic momentum.

But he points out that "immigration is highly concentrated in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and other major metropolitan areas that also receive internal migrants from other parts of Canada. This means that while a few metropolitan areas enjoy growing populations of educated young people, more remote, non-metropolitan areas suffer from declining populations and economies."

As national economies become more dependent on metropolitan areas, non-metropolitan areas increasingly lose economic, political and even social influence.

As a result, policy-makers will soon be faced with a choice between boosting national economies or ensuring non-metropolitan economies remain viable.

Governments are already helping in a number of ways, including building arenas or stadiums, but Hackworth says short-term fixes most likely won't work.

I could see the mayor of Toronto or the mayor of Montreal making a really strong case saying ‘Well, why are you taking resources away from us? We're the engine of growth of Canada.’

— Ohio State University economist Mark Partridge

"I think the feeling in the literature is that it is a waste of money for everyone," he says. "If there is not enough organic demand to have a 70,000-seat stadium, there probably won't be enough demand if you build it. But there is a lot of competition and sometimes it results in some ridiculous stadiums."

Mark Partridge, an economist at Ohio State University and the former Canada Research Chair in the New Rural Economy at the University of Saskatchewan, adds to the argument and gives us a glimpse of what the future may hold.

"I could see the mayor of Toronto or the mayor of Montreal making a really strong case saying ‘Well, why are you taking resources away from us? We're the engine of growth of Canada,’ and shift it to areas that aren't really productive," he says. "That would be the counter-argument to a massive intervention."

As big cities continue to grow and increasingly drive the national economy, federal and provincial governments will be caught in the middle of a battle between mayors, all fighting for what is best for their residents. And if more people continue to migrate to big cities and governments choose to fund areas where more people live, Canada's small communities will continue to struggle to survive.

(Photo courtesy The Canadian Press)