Clearly, the sky is not falling.
If you were to listen to some people over the past five years, growth has run rampant in the Parksville Qualicum Beach area. In letters to the editor and in online posts, some residents of the area have suggested development is going unchecked here, that growth in housing and population is running way ahead of the ability to provide services.
Some people have even suggested that developers are running amok, with municipal councils abdicating their responsibilities to marry growth with the ability to provide services.
The 2016 census numbers are being released this week by Statistics Canada and the numbers do not support the theories of the aforementioned Chicken Littles.
In the five years between 2011 and 2016, the City of Parksville added 537 people to its population, growing to 12,514 from 11,977 (four per cent). That rate of growth is less than the province on the whole, which was 5.6 per cent, and the country (5.1 per cent).
Qualicum Beach, always a place where it gets loud when any development is pitched, grew by only 2.9 per cent in that five-year period. The town added a grand total of 256 people to its population from 2011 to 2016. That’s 51 people a year.
Qualicum Beach’s Official Community Plan suggests a maximum population would be 12,000 people. At the rate of plus-50 a year, it would be 2077 before that max would be reached.
Oh, but those areas outside the town and city boundaries, those Regional District of Nanaimo pockets. That’s where the growth has been exploding because of lower taxes and development cost charges, the anti-development crowd has suggested.
Not so much. The French Creek/Dashwood part of the RDN (Area G), often cited as an example of unchecked development, grew by about 300 people in those five years, or 4.3 per cent.
The wild growth zone of this region was Bowser/Deep Bay/Qualicum Bay (RDN Area H), which grew in population by 10.7 per cent from 2011-2016. To put that in perspective, that was an addition of 375 people to push the population to 3,884.
Water is, and should be, a chief concern in this region in terms of population growth. Qualicum Beach boasts about its water supply and Parksville is currently spending tens of millions of dollars on its system. It seems the evidence does not support the naysayers of development here.
— Editorial by John Harding
