Housing starts down as P.E.I. population growth speeds up

P.E.I.'s construction industry is falling further behind in its efforts to keep up with a population that's growing at a record pace.

A Statistics Canada report released Wednesday showed a population growth of 1.2 per cent from Jan. 1 to March 1, which puts Prince Edward Island in a tie for top rate of growth with Alberta. Nationally, population growth in that quarter was 0.7 per cent.

The addition of 2,159 people to the Island's population sent the total flying past the provincial government's projection for 2023, which was revised just last month.

• Projection for July 1, 2023: 174,326
• Population estimate, March 1, 2023: 176,113

Meanwhile, the construction industry recorded just 123 housing starts in the first quarter of 2023. Given the average household size of 2.3 people on P.E.I., that's space for about 285 people.

It is the lowest number of first-quarter housing starts since 2019, and down one third from last year.

The province was able to make up some ground on housing when migration slowed in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, but since the beginning of 2019, the shortfall in housing spaces is more than 8,000.

Record number of immigrants

About 55 per cent of the province's growth came from immigration to Canada, as opposed to births or interprovincial relocation.

Statistics Canada recorded 1,274 immigrants landing on P.E.I. from January through March. Looking back as far as 1946, that is a record number, and only the third time immigration has exceeded 1,000 people in a quarter.

In the second half of the 20th century, immigration over three months exceeded 100 people only three times. That has flipped in recent decades, with immigration per quarter in the hundreds starting in 2006, even through the pandemic.

Interprovincial migration added another 790 people to the population.

That number is made up of almost 2,000 Canadians moving to P.E.I. from other parts of the country, nearly double the more than 1,000 people moving away from the Island.

Interprovincial migration has been volatile in recent years, with people coming and going at rates not seen since the 1980s.

The P.E.I. government launched a population growth strategy in 2017, and has regularly led the country since.

The strategy was launched to mitigate the problems associated with an aging population, such as a shortage of workers. But growth has created challenges — in particular, a housing shortage as the construction industry has been unable to keep up with demand for new homes.