London region population to boom by 50% over next 25 years: Queen’s Park

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The booming London area will lead Southwestern Ontario in population growth over the next 25 years with an expected increase of more than 50 per cent, the latest snapshot from Queen’s Park projects.

According to the latest population estimates by the Ministry of Finance, Southwestern Ontario is expected to grow from 1.86 million last year to 2.63 million by 2051, an increase of 41.1 per cent.

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That rate of increase for the region mirrors the projections for the entire province, whose population the ministry estimates will reach 22.1 million by the same year, up from about 15.6 million today.

London and Middlesex County together, whose population has already ballooned by about 60,000 people in the past five years, will lead the way in this part of the province, growing by a whopping 56.7 per cent over 25 years. Across Ontario, only the Oxford, Wellington, Dufferin, Waterloo, Halton, Peel and Ottawa regions are also expected to surpass the 50 per cent threshold.

If the projections hold up, the local population will grow at an annual average rate of 1.6 per cent a year, reaching about 880,000 people by 2051.

That would be a “robust” pace of growth for the city and its surrounding communities, especially considering historical standards, said Don Kerr, a demographer at Western University’s King’s University College

“Up until relatively recently, about a decade back, our average growth rate was well under one per cent annually, lagging behind the national average,” he said. “If anything, I might characterize this as a high-growth scenario.”

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Across the region, Oxford County is projected to be the second fastest-growing area in Southwestern Ontario in terms of population growth at 51.9 per cent over the next quarter-century.

Essex, Elgin, Perth and Simcoe could fall anywhere between 30 and 50 per cent, the province projects.

Several factors are in play to explain the potential growth locally.

One of them is London’s relative affordability compared to communities closer to the Greater Toronto Area, Kerr said.

“Toronto has gotten too large and too expensive to purchase a home or a challenge to rent. Hence, we’ve had some spillover into London and neighbouring cities,” he said.

As is the case for all of Ontario, immigration will also play a big role in London, with the province estimating as much as 97 per cent of the province’s population growth will come both from international migration as well from people from other parts of the country.

Fanshawe College and Western University, which each year attract thousands of international students, as well as big companies that have chosen to settle locally, such as Amazon and the new Volkswagen battery plant near St. Thomas, are also boosting the region’s prospects, said Mike Moffatt, an economist at Western University’s Ivey Business School.

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“We are going to be a region that’s growing faster, both in population and economically, than other parts of the province,” he said.

For a city that is already facing a housing affordability crisis, spurred in large part by explosive population growth and a shortage of housing options, such trends will bring along some pains, too.

A silver lining included in the projections is that population growth is expected to slow down in the coming years before picking up in 2029. That will be the result of new measures implemented by the federal government, including capping the number of international student permits it issues each year.

“This short slowdown will help municipalities catch up, but they really need to take advantage of that,” Moffatt said.

He said it will also be important for London and other communities facing this type of growth to speed up conversations about housing and infrastructure needs.

“We’re going to we’re going to need more homes; we’re going to need more transit; we’re going to have to think about how we get around the city with a population that’s 50 per cent larger,” he said. “It is absolutely going to cause us to have to sort of rethink how we have our city, and there’s going to be some difficult conversations.

“I definitely think the city 30 years from now is going to look like a very different place than it does today.”

jjuha@postmedia.com

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