Sask. Opposition criticizes government for lowest population growth rate in Canada

Saskatchewan's Official Opposition says the province's low population growth rate is setting it up for a "gloomy future."

Saskatchewan has the lowest annual growth rate in the country, only climbing by 0.36 per cent last year, according to the latest population report from the provincial bureau of statistics based on provincial population estimates from Statistics Canada. 

"You're not in first place if the only thing you're being first at is last place," said NDP immigration critic Aleana Young during question period on Tuesday.

Preliminary data suggests that in the fourth quarter of 2021, 2,690 people moved to Saskatchewan, while 4,072 people left the province.

About 42 per cent of the people who left Saskatchewan moved to Alberta, according to the report.

The government's growth plan says it has a population target of 1.4 million people by 2030, but Young said she "crunched the numbers" and that the government is on target to reach that goal by 2068. Saskatchewan's population was 1,183,269, as of Jan. 1.

Young added that P.E.I, which has a population of about 166,000 people, added more people (4,817) last year than Saskatchewan (4,298).

"It's not really funny to be the slowest growing province in the country, is it? It's setting us up for a gloomy future," Young said. 

Jeremy Harrison, minister of trade and export development, responded by saying that the province has grown by leaps and bounds since the NDP was in power.

The province's population increased by 170,000 in the 15 years that the Saskatchewan Party has been in government, Harrison said.

"We have seen a rate of population growth in this province over the course of the last decade and a half … that we have not seen since the 1920s," Harrison said. 

"That was because this government put in place policies that allowed newcomers to come into the province, both from outside of Canada, and from relocating from within Canada, and find opportunity."

Harrison added that 30,000 jobs were created in the last year, exports rose by 35 per cent and there has been more than $14-billion in new investments.