County's population growing but below national average
By Ryan Paulsen rpaulsen@thedailyobserver.ca
Posted 4 hours ago
RYAN PAULSEN
rpaulsen@thedailyobserver.ca
The tally is complete and the results are in, and according to the 2011 census data released by Statistics Canada yesterday, Canada’s population is coming along nicely, growing 5.9 per cent from 2006 (when the last census was taken) to 2011.
As for Renfrew County, however, the last five years haven’t been quite so fruitful.
In 2006, the county’s population (including the City of Pembroke and the Pikwakanagan Algonquin reservation) was sitting at 97,542. Five years later, it’s grown to 101,326. The numbers tell of a four per cent growth across the county – nearly two per cent lower than the national average – with almost two-thirds of that growth happening in two of the county’s largest centres: Arnprior (with a 13.4 per cent jump in population, from 7,158 to 8,114) and Petawawa (whose 9.1 per cent growth made up the biggest individual slice of the population pie, bringing the town from 14,651 to 15,988), which account for 2,293 of the county’s 3,784 new people.
Joining Arnprior and Petawawa to round out the top three county municipalities in terms of growth is Brudenell-Lyndoch-Raglan, whose population jumped 10.8 per cent from 1,497 in 2006 to 1,658 in 2011.
On the other end of the spectrum were the handful of municipalities whose numbers dipped into the negatives over the last half-decade.
The Township of Greater Madawaska saw the biggest shrinkage, losing 9.7 per cent of their population, dropping from 2,751 in 2006 down to 2,485 last year. Next was Killaloe-Hagarty-Richards, dropping 5.8 per cent from 2,550 to 2,402, followed by Horton Township, which lost three per cent to dip from 2,803 down to 2,719.
Killaloe-Hagarty-Richards Mayor Janice Visneskie was shocked to learn that her township had suffered one of the biggest population drops in the region, since previous year’s Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) numbers seemed to indicate otherwise.
“I was surprised,” she told The Daily Observer in a telephone interview. “I can understand, though. We don’t have work, the industries – tourism and logging – that we benefit from are both suffering so greatly, so I can understand but it still surprised me that [the loss rate] was so high.”
Petawawa Mayor, and Renfrew County Warden, Bob Sweet was reserved in his response to the news, saying that he wasn’t hugely surprised at the areas that showed the most growth, and was pleased to see the county as a whole growing steadily, although he was disappointed to see some of the more rural municipalities struggling.
“That was to be expected,” he said in response to the strong numbers posted by Petawawa and Arnprior. “We’ve seen that sort of growth, and that would be an easy call, based on all of the data that’s come through the planning division at the County of Renfrew and listening even to the City of Pembroke and some of the growth they have got, and some of the issues that are going on there too.
“So I’m not surprised that there’s growth in areas, but the other side of the coin, of course, is the other smaller communities surrounding us are still struggling. Growth is great, and it helps pay the bills with assessment and so forth, but the rural areas are still struggling for growth. It’s spotty. There’s a patchwork type of pattern, but I’m not surprised at the ones that are showing the growth.
“I’m pleased to see that we’re moving ahead and that it’s not stagnant and that there is some growth over the last four or five years that the county is experiencing. Is it as brisk as we’d like to see it? Obviously not. I’d like to see all of the communities grow... but overall I think it’s a positive thing, even through it’s sketchy in areas. The whole county, as a whole and when you put it all together, has seen some growth. It would be nice, obviously, to see it move forward substantially and keep up with the provincial average.”
While the population data that was released yesterday gives part of the picture of the region’s population, planners at all levels of government are still awaiting the more useful, and more specific, data that is scheduled to be released later this year.
According to the Statistics Canada census website:
(www12.statcan.gc.ca), age and sex information from the 2011 census will be available on May 29. On Sep. 19, two more census topics will be released: “families, households and marital status” and “structural type of dwelling and collectives.” Finally, language information gathered in the census will be available on Oct. 24.
Ryan Paulsen is a Daily Observer multimedia journalist. Follow him on Twitter @PRyanPaulsen. | 
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