{"id":624530,"date":"2024-06-17T17:06:16","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T14:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-charlottetown-became-an-immigration-boom-town\/"},"modified":"2024-06-17T17:06:16","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T14:06:16","slug":"how-charlottetown-became-an-immigration-boom-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-charlottetown-became-an-immigration-boom-town\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Charlottetown Became an Immigration Boom Town"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a4114ffe1ed7\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a4114ffe1ed7\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-charlottetown-became-an-immigration-boom-town\/#Get_the_Best_of_Macleans_straight_to_your_inbox\" >Get the Best of Maclean\u2019s straight to your inbox.<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"wp-block \">\n<div class=\"relative ad-free-zone\">\n<div class=\"w-screen overflow-hidden -mt-20\">\n<div class=\"tablet:h-[calc(100svh)] overflow-hidden flex flex-col-reverse tablet:grid tablet:grid-cols-2 bg-white text-dark tablet:text-dark tablet:bg-white tablet:border-b-1 border-b-grey-light\">\n<div class=\"grid place-content-center tablet:pt-40 px-20 tablet:pl-10\">\n<div class=\" text-dark w-full max-w-[600px] mx-auto tablet:max-w-[640px] py-20 tablet:px-40 tablet:p-40 bg-opacity-100 tablet:bg-opacity-[var(--bg-opacity)] text-center\">\n<div class=\"text-grey leading-smm text-smm tablet:text-base tablet:leading-smxl font-lightmedium font-sans mb-10\">For more than half a decade, Charlottetown has sustained the highest immigration rates in Canada. The influx has saved P.E.I. from demographic oblivion\u2014and made it a case study in the perils of ultra-rapid growth.\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\" text-dark author text-xs leading-xs whitespace-break-spaces\">BY ALEX CYR<br \/>\nPHOTOGRAPHY BY DARREN CALABRESE<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tablet:row-start-auto row-start-1 tablet:h-[calc(100svh)]\"><img alt=\"\" fetchpriority=\"high\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1332\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"w-full h-full object-cover\" style=\"color:transparent\" sizes=\"(max-width: 834px) 50vw, (max-width: 1024px) 80vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=384&amp;q=80 384w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=640&amp;q=80 640w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=750&amp;q=80 750w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=828&amp;q=80 828w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=1080&amp;q=80 1080w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=1200&amp;q=80 1200w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=1920&amp;q=80 1920w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=2048&amp;q=80 2048w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=80 3840w\" src=\"https:\/\/macleans.ca\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=80\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"max-w-[640px] mx-auto pb-20 px-20 pt-20\">\n<div class=\"mb-8 flex gap-6\">\n<div class=\"relative inline-block\"><button aria-label=\"Sharing Button\" class=\"rounded-xl border border-grey-light px-12 py-6 hover:bg-grey-lighter transition-colors\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" fill=\"none\"><g clip-path=\"url(#share_svg__a)\"><path stroke=\"#121212\" stroke-linecap=\"round\" stroke-linejoin=\"round\" d=\"M2.419 15.525c1.286-1.37 4.661-4.275 9.458-4.275V15l6.25-6.25-6.25-6.25v3.75c-4.125 0-9.413 3.941-10 9.027a.313.313 0 0 0 .542.248\"\/><\/g><defs><clippath id=\"share_svg__a\"><path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M0 0h20v20H0z\"\/><\/clippath><\/defs><\/svg><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"fixed laptop:absolute max-laptop:bottom-0 laptop:top-[calc(100%+20px)] left-0 right-0 laptop:right-auto w-full laptop:w-[190px] p-20 rounded-lg bg-white font-sans shadow-[0px_0px_10px_rgba(0,0,0,0.15)] invisible\">\n<ul class=\"list-none p-0\">\n<li class=\"border-b border-b-grey-light text-dark last:border-b-0 group\"><button class=\"flex items-center gap-10 py-7 group-last:pb-0 w-full font-light group\"><span>Copy Link<\/span><\/button><\/li>\n<li class=\"border-b border-b-grey-light text-dark last:border-b-0 group\"><button class=\"flex items-center gap-10 py-7 group-last:pb-0 w-full font-light group\"><span>Email<\/span><\/button><\/li>\n<li class=\"border-b border-b-grey-light text-dark last:border-b-0 group\"><button class=\"flex items-center gap-10 py-7 group-last:pb-0 w-full font-light group\"><span><a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a><\/span><\/button><\/li>\n<li class=\"border-b border-b-grey-light text-dark last:border-b-0 group\"><button class=\"flex items-center gap-10 py-7 group-last:pb-0 w-full font-light group\"><span>X<\/span><\/button><\/li>\n<li class=\"border-b border-b-grey-light text-dark last:border-b-0 group\"><button class=\"flex items-center gap-10 py-7 group-last:pb-0 w-full font-light group\"><span>LinkedIn<\/span><\/button><\/li>\n<li class=\"border-b border-b-grey-light text-dark last:border-b-0 group\"><button class=\"flex items-center gap-10 py-7 group-last:pb-0 w-full font-light group\"><span>Whats<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">App<\/a><\/span><\/button><\/li>\n<li class=\"border-b border-b-grey-light text-dark last:border-b-0 group\"><button class=\"flex items-center gap-10 py-7 group-last:pb-0 w-full font-light group\"><span>Reddit<\/span><\/button><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"uppercase text-xs leading-normal font-sans text-grey font-lightmedium\">June 17, 2024<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap     undefined\"><strong>One morning <\/strong>when I was eight years old, my Grade 3 teacher cut math class short and brought us all to the conference room of the small school I attended in Abram-Village, Prince Edward Island. There, a social worker stood in front of the small student body\u2014about 120 kids\u2014and announced that a new family was coming to our village. The Mazarabakizas were a family of refugees from Burundi who\u2019d fled their home due to civil war. Their four eldest children would attend our school, and the social worker implored us to treat them as we would any other friends\u2014regardless of their cultural background and differences.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">If it seems a little extreme to have a full-school intervention on behalf of a single immigrant family, it was warranted in P.E.I. in 2003. Until the Mazarabakiza family arrived, I was the most foreign person in my class (my father is Acadian from New Brunswick). The population of our province was so homogenous that people sometimes identified each other by old family nicknames; on my mother\u2019s side, we\u2019d been called the Joe Cannons ever since my great-great-grandfather Joe allegedly killed the last bear on the island with a cannon in the late 19th century. In my village of about 350 people, everyone was white\u2014it is entirely possible that some of the kids I went to school with had never seen a Black person.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">It wasn\u2019t just that the island lacked diversity\u2014it was also trapped in a demographic death spiral. From my birth in 1995 to my 18th birthday, the island\u2019s population increased by only 9,000 people. Immigration was virtually non-existent, and young adults moved away in droves, driving up the median age from 34 to 43. I left for Ontario in 2017, because making a living as a journalist on P.E.I. seemed improbable at best.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Those days now feel very long ago. Around 2015, P.E.I.\u2019s provincial government began juicing its lacklustre immigration numbers in a last-ditch bid to secure a prosperous future for the province\u2014and it worked better than they could have imagined. Today, when I tell my teenage cousins that the arrival of an African family warranted a school-wide town hall, they\u2019re both amused and horrified. They go to school with students from Cameroon, Germany and elsewhere. For most Canadians, that\u2019s unremarkable, and has been for a long time. But on P.E.I., it\u2019s a very recent phenomenon. In the past 18 months, the province added 9,000 people, as many as it did during the first two decades of my life. That pace was not a one-off. Over the past eight years, Charlottetown has experienced the highest per-capita immigration rate of any Canadian urban region. It\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that P.E.I. and its capital city have undergone some of the highest immigration levels, and fastest demographic changes, in North America, if not the developed world. Last year, Charlottetown\u2019s five per cent annual growth rate put to shame the U.S.\u2019s fastest-growing large metro, Dallas, which grew at a comparatively paltry two per cent. (In addition to immigration, a post-pandemic influx of Canadians from other provinces has spiked the population even more.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide \"><img alt=\"alt tag missing\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=640&amp;q=75 640w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=750&amp;q=75 750w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=828&amp;q=75 828w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=1080&amp;q=75 1080w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=1200&amp;q=75 1200w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=1920&amp;q=75 1920w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=2048&amp;q=75 2048w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75 3840w\" src=\"https:\/\/macleans.ca\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE132.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75\"\/><figcaption class=\"w-full text-left\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">It\u2019s not only the sheer amount of growth that\u2019s transformative. Between the 2016 and 2021 censuses, the number of non-white Charlottetonians more than doubled thanks to newcomers from China, India, the Philippines, the Middle East and elsewhere\u2014and that pace has almost certainly quickened since the last census. There are new Islamic, Buddhist and Sikh religious centres. There are Asian supermarkets and Indian bakeries. Mandarin has overtaken French, my mother tongue, as the city\u2019s second-most-spoken language (Punjabi is third). Maybe most importantly, the city\u2019s median age has dropped by three years, from 41.4 to 38.5. Charlottetown now has one of the most youthful urban populations in Canada, and P.E.I. is the only province besides Nova Scotia and New Brunswick where the number of births has trended up, not down, over the past half-decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">In other words, the province\u2019s immigration gambit paid off spectacularly. On my visits home in the past few years, I\u2019ve dined at new sushi restaurants, taken in a cricket <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a> and met new Islanders who hail from all over the world. But I\u2019ve also found a place buckling under the stress of its ultra-fast growth. The number of unhoused people almost doubled between 2018 and 2021. Apartments rent for twice what they did a few years ago, and the vacancy rate is the lowest in the country, at only 0.5 per cent. Housing development isn\u2019t keeping up with demand. The health-care system is on the brink of collapse; the province had just 24 ICU beds as of 2020, and a dearth of family doctors. It outsources many complex medical procedures, like kidney transplants, heart surgeries and some cancer treatments, to Halifax and Moncton.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-pull-quote undefined\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-primary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f7d3da7e98602d95db3982e66a1b1b50\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>In the past 18 months alone, P.E.I. added<br \/>9,000 people, nearly as many as it did<br \/>during my entire childhood<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">In the past year, Canadians have been embroiled in debate about whether our country\u2019s soaring immigration rates are sustainable and what should be done about it. Nowhere is that tension more evident than in my home province, where all of these trends have been more extreme. And its small size has made the rapid change more striking and more difficult to manage. As Charlottetown especially grows to look less like its old self and more like the rest of Canada, it will have to resist the pressure to crumble under the weight of its own success.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">While reporting this story, I spoke to new Islanders who are unsure whether they\u2019ll be able to make a life for themselves in a place where the scale of everything\u2014the housing market, the job market, the health system\u2014is small and beyond maxed out. Most want to stay, but aren\u2019t sure if they can. And while few locals want P.E.I. to return to its stagnant past, tensions are rising around the pace of change. The unmanaged burst of growth today risks undermining the benefits it\u2019s already brought\u2014in the worst case, sending another generation of Islanders out of province and off to the mainland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\"><strong>Charlottetown once had <\/strong>a blueprint for welcoming newcomers\u2014it\u2019s just that the last time it did so in large numbers was more than a century ago. Most of those new Islanders hailed from the same part of the world: Ireland and the U.K. There were scant exceptions, including a trickle of Chinese immigrants in the 1880s to help build the Grand Trunk Railway and hundreds of Lebanese people in the same decade escaping a military occupation of their country by the Turks. But that was about it for more than a century. While Toronto grew into one of the world\u2019s most multicultural metropolises, and a decades-long resources boom turned prairie outposts into bustling cities, P.E.I. remained tiny and ethnically one-dimensional as immigrants chose brighter lights and bigger cities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">This is how things were when Rosa and Joe Byrne moved to P.E.I. in 1993. People of colour were rare in Charlottetown; the 2001 census counted only 750 out of a metro population then numbering nearly 60,000. Rosa was born in the Dominican Republic, where she met Joe, a Quebecer who spent seven years as a Catholic missionary there. Joe had studied at the University of Prince Edward Island in the early 1980s and loved Charlottetown\u2019s small-town appeal. When he and Rosa relocated there in the \u201990s, she found the city charming but also jarringly homogeneous. Mixed-race couples like Rosa and Joe were almost non-existent. Her colleagues snapped at her at work because her accent was hard for them to understand. Their son, Daniel, faced racial comments at school, being called \u201cchocolate.\u201d Discussions about racism were frequent around the family dinner table. \u201cI had conversations with my children about that,\u201d says Joe, \u201cand that it was okay to look different from most people on the Island.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">There wasn\u2019t even anywhere to buy staples of Dominican cooking, like plantains\u2014Joe helped the tiny Latino community ship them from Halifax by inter-city bus. The Byrnes almost jetted for Halifax or Quebec, until Joe landed a job with the PEI Association of Newcomers to Canada.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide \"><img alt=\"Joe and Rosa Byrne moved to Charlottetown in 1993. At the time, they were one of the only mixed-race couples in the city, and their children were among the only students of colour in their school.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=640&amp;q=75 640w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=750&amp;q=75 750w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=828&amp;q=75 828w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=1080&amp;q=75 1080w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=1200&amp;q=75 1200w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=1920&amp;q=75 1920w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=2048&amp;q=75 2048w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75 3840w\" src=\"https:\/\/macleans.ca\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE130.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75\"\/><figcaption class=\"w-full text-left\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">At the time, just after the turn of the 21st century, the province was facing a brain drain on two fronts. Young people like the Byrnes were leaving, and the oldest baby boomers were reaching retirement age. Jim Sentance, an economics professor at the University of Prince Edward Island, remembers that the halls of government and academia were anxious about the fact that the province would soon be starved for working-age people. The province\u2019s long-time population growth strategy\u2014luring expats back home\u2014was floundering. Immigration, the government decided, was a better fix.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">The province signed on to the federal government\u2019s provincial nominee program, or PNP, in 2001. It had been created just three years earlier in an effort to encourage immigrants to settle in greater numbers outside of the country\u2019s biggest cities and provide provinces more autonomy to select immigrants based on their labour and demographic needs. P.E.I.\u2019s program set its bar lower than other provinces, offering permanent residency in exchange for a $200,000 investment in local businesses. The program led to a brief surge of newcomers, until criticisms arose that funds were being doled out to friends and families of provincial officials. In 2008 the program was changed so that newcomers would have to actively run their business, not just invest passively.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">In 2012, the province also set up a new stream aimed at immigrant entrepreneurs, whom the government was counting on to jump-start the economy with new ventures. They could receive permanent-resident status immediately, provided they gave the province a $200,000 deposit, to be returned after operating a business for one year. But it was shut down in 2018 amid allegations that hundreds of would-be permanent residents had used false local addresses to make it look like they were living on P.E.I. No wrongdoing was ultimately found, but the debacle highlighted anxieties around the nominee program\u2014i.e., that its low barriers to entry drew in people who used it to secure PR, then decamped for larger centres as soon as they could.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide \"><img alt=\"alt tag missing\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=640&amp;q=75 640w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=750&amp;q=75 750w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=828&amp;q=75 828w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=1080&amp;q=75 1080w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=1200&amp;q=75 1200w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=1920&amp;q=75 1920w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=2048&amp;q=75 2048w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75 3840w\" src=\"https:\/\/macleans.ca\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE131.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75\"\/><figcaption class=\"w-full text-left\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">That stream was suspended, but the PNP system overall has maintained a reputation as an easy entry point to Canada. Unlike in most other provinces, newcomers in low-skilled jobs, like fast food and retail, can live and work in P.E.I. for two years before getting permanent-resident status. That\u2019s helped create a surge in newcomers in the past several years, while doing little to address labour-market shortages in the most needed fields. Additional paths to residency have brought in even more people, including a critical-workers stream to fill low-skilled occupations like food service and agriculture, and an express entry stream for more highly skilled workers, which offers permanent residency after six months. All the while, the federal government\u2019s own immigration targets have risen, bringing in more people through standard federal streams and boosting international-student enrolment at the province\u2019s two main post-secondary institutions, the University of Prince Edward Island and Holland College.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">By 2019, word had gotten around that Canada\u2019s smallest province was also its quickest entry point\u2014and no one was prepared for the rush that followed. The prospect of overpopulation or ultra-fast growth, says Sentance, was completely off the radar of a government that had for decades been consumed by opposite problems: a declining fertility rate and a workforce drained by retirement and outmigration. Erica Stanley, an immigration consultant from Charlottetown, says the provincial government clearly rushed to invite people into the province without a proper integration plan, nor any idea how to scale up housing, health care, schooling or the job market. \u201cWe packed in immigrants to boost the economy,\u201d she says, \u201cbut we did not have the resources to support them.\u201d Sentance is more blunt: \u201cThe government probably lost control.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\"><strong>There has been <\/strong>one major benefit to come out of P.E.I.\u2019s population boom: when immigrants arrive today, there is usually a community waiting for them. Alan Nguyen is a 40-year-old husband, father of two and finance manager who moved from Vietnam to Charlottetown with his family in 2020. His fluency in English and French helped him almost immediately land a sales job at a car dealership.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">His experience was dramatically different from Rosa and Joe Byrne\u2019s back in the \u201990s. When I spoke to him, he was one of more than 500 Vietnamese people in Charlottetown, a number that has skyrocketed from a mere 25 in 2016. He lives in a single-family house in East Royalty, a leafy suburban area in the city\u2019s northeast, enjoys good Vietnamese and Japanese restaurants within walking distance of his office and, unlike the Byrnes\u2019 fruitless plantain quests, can even find staple cooking ingredients from Vietnam in local stores. He doesn\u2019t worry about his kids sticking out at school, either. With dozens of Vietnamese children in their neighborhood, they don\u2019t have to deal with the burden of being exotic outsiders. And though Charlottetown has nothing on Ho Chi Minh City\u2019s nightlife\u2014a regular outing for Nguyen and his wife, Nancy, might be a family dinner at Swiss Chalet\u2014Maritime camaraderie can make up for the quiet nights. \u201cYou talk to an Islander and make a joke, and they laugh all the time,\u201d he says. One of his clients even brings freshly caught lobster to his office occasionally. It\u2019s a stark difference, he says, from when he lived in Montreal for two years in 2011 and 2012 and struggled to make friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligndefault \"><img alt=\"When Lebanon-born chef Pierre El-Hajjar moved to Charlottetown in 2011, his neighbours wouldn't even taste his food; today he runs a successful vegan restaurant\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=640&amp;q=75 640w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=750&amp;q=75 750w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=828&amp;q=75 828w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=1080&amp;q=75 1080w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=1200&amp;q=75 1200w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=1920&amp;q=75 1920w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=2048&amp;q=75 2048w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75 3840w\" src=\"https:\/\/macleans.ca\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE134.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75\"\/><figcaption class=\"w-full text-left\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Pierre El-Hajjar can also attest to the benefits of the maximum-volume approach to immigration. A Lebanon-born chef, he moved to the city in 2011 and was struck by a dearth of diverse cuisine\u2014he struggled even to convince his Islander neighbours to try his barbecue. In 2021 he opened Gaia Urban Eatery on Queen Street downtown, a vegan joint featuring dishes like beet halloumi salad and tofu bibimbap. Business is thriving, which El-Hajjar attributes not so much to P.E.I.\u2019s growing immigrant population as to locals who have come in a short time to embrace newness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Both El-Hajjar and Nguyen know they\u2019ve been lucky. El-Hajjar has hosted new immigrants, unable to find a place to live, in his own basement apartment over the years. And Nguyen told me about more recently arrived friends who work at car washes or Tim Hortons, spend their time between shifts scrolling through job listings, and live in cramped, overpriced apartments.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Even Nguyen\u2019s material comforts haven\u2019t insulated him from the infrastructure burdens that rapid growth has placed on the city. He\u2019s been on the waiting list for a family doctor since he arrived four years ago; he\u2019s been told it will take another four years to get off it. Like many newcomers, he\u2019s relied on overburdened walk-in clinics and emergency rooms, where visits increased by 20 per cent between 2021 and 2023. Health Minister Mark McLane has blamed rapid immigration and population growth for the health-care system\u2019s recent failings, saying the island would need a new physician every 80 days to keep up with the influx. The system was in poor condition even before the pandemic, with fewer physicians per capita than any other province, in large part thanks to the difficulty of attracting new doctors to a small province with relatively low wages. Wait lists were already long in the 2010s, in the early days of the population surge, and the problem has only worsened.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">The consequences of the lack of foresight are becoming increasingly dire. Erica Stanley says she\u2019s seen new Islanders visiting their home countries for eye appointments, dental care and surgical procedures, sometimes even sending children back alone for faster care. \u201cAnyone who has the option is totally bypassing the system here,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not what they expected when they came to Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide \"><img alt=\"alt tag missing\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=640&amp;q=75 640w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=750&amp;q=75 750w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=828&amp;q=75 828w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=1080&amp;q=75 1080w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=1200&amp;q=75 1200w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=1920&amp;q=75 1920w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=2048&amp;q=75 2048w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75 3840w\" src=\"https:\/\/macleans.ca\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE133.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75\"\/><figcaption class=\"w-full text-left\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Joy Fajardo and her husband, Francis, are originally from the Philippines. They moved to Canada from Singapore in 2019 because it seemed like a more affordable place to start a family. Francis, a logistics professional, accepted a job as a shift manager at Subway in Charlottetown because the franchise agreed to sponsor him and fast-track his family to permanent residency. The couple moved to the capital without having ever heard of P.E.I. Shortly after receiving PR status, Joy became pregnant. In the first trimester, she began experiencing stomach pains. She was on a waitlist for a family doctor for three years and, without one, she had no regular pre-natal care. Instead she waited up to eight hours in emergency rooms for ad hoc check-ups. The pregnancy ended in miscarriage. \u201cI had those stomach pains and I knew there was something wrong but I couldn\u2019t get it treated,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not the doctors, it\u2019s not the nurses, it\u2019s the system.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Fajardo insists that she loves P.E.I. and points out that her family\u2019s situation has improved. Her husband has found a job in his field, and she\u2019s had a good experience with her second pregnancy. But her first encounter with the health system speaks to the problem of scale that\u2019s come with the population influx: everything feels small compared to the extreme pace of growth. The health-care system struggles to reach the critical mass of resources needed to attract specialists in fields like cardiology, oncology and pediatrics. The province even has a formal agreement with Halifax\u2019s children\u2019s hospital to send Island children there for care they can\u2019t receive at home. The economy, long reliant on natural resources, the public sector and tourism, offers meagre growth opportunities for the entrepreneurs the province has recruited, and relatively few job prospects with larger employers. Even housing, which is in critically short supply, is afflicted by this problem of scale. Last year, ground broke on just 487 new homes in the city, even as Statistics Canada estimated the population grew by more than 4,000 (a single-year record). The building industry has been going full steam for several years, but it needs to ramp up far more. Housing Minister Rob Lantz says that one impediment to building faster is the fact that many of P.E.I.\u2019s developers are mom-and-pop contractors, ill-equipped to tackle larger projects or apply for the CMHC loans they require. Charlottetown is also encumbered by strict zoning by-laws, which recently prevented a developer from building an eight-storey building downtown. It would have had 158 units, including 30 renting below market price. The city\u2019s tallest edifice is still the Delta Hotel on Queen Street, built in 1983, and only 10 storeys high.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-pull-quote undefined\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote alignwide has-primary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e2c1d1145b8e64d1e12fed1c972ca55c\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>Last year, ground broke on just 487 new<br \/>homes in Charlottetown, even as the<br \/>population grew by more than 4,000 people<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">The consequences of the housing crisis are distressing in a community where homelessness was rare until recently. In 2022, an encampment of unhoused people appeared in the city\u2019s east end\u2014an unprecedented sight. (It has since been vacated.) The median rents for new apartment listings surged 10 per cent last year alone, thanks in large part to the paltry vacancy rate. The average two-bedroom is still only $1,166, though new listings tend to go for well over $1,500. The average house price now hovers around $400,000, more than twice what it was seven years ago. That may sound like nothing to transplants from Ontario, but it\u2019s a shock for locals and for many young immigrants\u2014especially considering that P.E.I. has recently experienced some of Canada\u2019s highest inflation rates and lowest wages. (Charlottetown\u2019s median after-tax household income is around $67,000, well below that found in many larger cities; the same figure in Toronto is about $85,000.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Newcomers flock to social-media groups to swap job and apartment postings and make social connections. \u201cPEI Updates\u201d is an Instagram community started in 2020 by Tejbir Singh, a 25-year-old Punjabi immigrant. It now has more than 12,000 followers; roughly three-quarters of them are new immigrants. The page has become so popular that businesses often ask Singh to post ads for them. He even books halls and organizes social events through the account.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligndefault \"><img alt=\"Tejbir Singh moved from Toronto to Charlottetown seeking a faster path to permanent residency through P.E.I's provincial nominee program. He wants to stay, but the skyrocketing cost of housing and uncertain job prospects weigh on him.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=640&amp;q=75 640w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=750&amp;q=75 750w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=828&amp;q=75 828w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=1080&amp;q=75 1080w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=1200&amp;q=75 1200w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=1920&amp;q=75 1920w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=2048&amp;q=75 2048w, \/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75 3840w\" src=\"https:\/\/macleans.ca\/_next\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcms.macleans.ca%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F06%2FJULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE135.jpg&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75\"\/><figcaption class=\"w-full text-left\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Singh moved from Toronto to P.E.I. in 2020, seeking a faster route to permanent residency. He first took a job at the Delta Hotel downtown and now works as a bus driver. Social integration hasn\u2019t been a problem\u2014the city\u2019s South Asian community has exploded in size, <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trip<\/a>ling over the past five years to more than 3,000 people. He\u2019s found it easy to meet other Indian immigrants at the local cricket pitch, built in 2018 in Stratford, a suburb of Charlottetown. Fifteen players formed a WhatsApp group where they shared job and apartment postings (that group inspired Tejbir\u2019s own Instagram page).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Several of Singh\u2019s friends are in their 20s and want to build a life on P.E.I., but extremely tight job and housing markets threaten to chase them away. Lovepreet Singh (who is not related to Tejbir) graduated with a degree in accounting from the University of Toronto in 2021 and promptly hightailed it to Charlottetown through P.E.I.\u2019s express entry program. He landed a job at a call centre just two weeks after moving and later became a taxi driver. The cost of living was manageable compared to Toronto, and he was well on his way to becoming a Canadian resident. Last year, he lost his job due to a lack of demand for cab drivers and spent months looking for work in a small labour market increasingly crowded with locals and newcomers alike. He was rehired last year\u2014the population surge has created more demand for drivers\u2014but he remains uncertain about the future. Both Lovepreet and Tejbir imagined staying in P.E.I. when they moved there. Both have now secured permanent residency, and both want to stay, but whether they can depends on factors beyond their control: especially the cost of housing and the career opportunities the province can offer. They would like to buy their own homes in the next few years, but neither make close to enough money to make that dream a reality. They\u2019ve started jobs on the side to boost their cash flow: Tejbir opened his own driving school, and Lovepreet started a cleaning company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">For now, Tejbir lives with two roommates in a two-bedroom house in East Royalty, where more than a quarter of the population are first-generation immigrants. Newcomers also congregate at the apartment complexes in Royal Court, a burgeoning international community nestled between University Avenue and North River Road, the city\u2019s two most important north-south thoroughfares. Yet another concentration of new arrivals, many of them students, populate Browns Court, a network of cul-de-sacs across the street from the University of Prince Edward Island. More than half of the residents in these areas are first-generation arrivals, a volume of first-gen residents comparable to areas in Canada\u2019s largest cities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Tejbir pays his share toward the apartment\u2019s rent of $1,950. Lovepreet shares a three-bedroom basement in the same neighbourhood with two friends, and pays his share of the $1,800 rent. Those figures are low compared to many other places in Canada, but competition for rentals in Charlottetown is fierce. There was a room full of bunk beds circulating on Facebook Marketplace earlier this year, and family homes are routinely crowded with double the number of people they should hold. Tejbir says when he visited an apartment to potentially rent one of its rooms, there were roughly 20 other interested parties.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Tejbir finds the pace of life and the ease of making friends in P.E.I. preferable to Toronto\u2014but he is not convinced that building a life in Charlottetown is much easier than in Canada\u2019s largest city. \u201cWhen I came here, everything was available because there were fewer immigrants,\u201d he says. \u201cNowadays it\u2019s difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\"><strong>If Tejbir and Lovepreet <\/strong>leave, they will have plenty of company. The provincial nomination program has earned P.E.I. a reputation as a permanent-resident factory\u2014a soft landing point for immigrants who may not intend to stay, or who eventually outgrow its small-scale economy and jet for bigger locales. Many people come in but many go out, leaving in their wake abandoned businesses, wasted investment in settlement resources and a local population constantly adjusting to the flux in their communities. P.E.I.\u2019s five-year retention rate\u2014the percentage of immigrants who remain in the province after five years\u2014was only 31 per cent in 2022, the most recent year for which retention data is available. That\u2019s by far the lowest in the country, less than half of neighbouring Nova Scotia and one-third of Ontario\u2019s rate. (That said, the trend line is encouraging: the rate has doubled in the past few years.) The sheer volume of newcomers is so high that the province has maintained its high population growth, outmigration notwithstanding, but for locals like Erica Stanley, the constant flow is still demoralizing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">\u201cI think we\u2019ve become complacent and accepted our status as a starter province,\u201d says Stanley. \u201cIt\u2019s a place for people to do business, learn the language and then move on to their preferred destination. It\u2019s disheartening.\u201d Sentance, however, isn\u2019t concerned about the retention rate, describing the province\u2019s strategy as \u201cthrowing many at the wall and seeing who sticks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">As I researched this story, I became curious about the Mazarabakiza family: were they still on P.E.I.? And if not, where had they gone? A social media search led me to Joshua, the fourth-eldest child, who is now 26 and lives in Ottawa. He moved in 2022 in search of a tech sales job. He\u2019d wanted to find work in that field on P.E.I., but could only get hired at a car dealership. He didn\u2019t think the province would offer enough for his long-term future.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">\u201cI love P.E.I. and the community, but I\u2019ve always wanted to start a company, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be able to get to the level that I want there,\u201d he says. He feels that his youth is better spent in a bigger city, where he has more opportunity to set himself up as an entrepreneur and build something larger than he\u2019d likely be able to on the Island.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">He told me that four of his seven siblings did like him and left the Island, all for Ottawa. It pained him to leave the province that took him in as a refugee 20 years ago and where his parents still live\u2014especially after noticing how diverse Charlottetown has become. Yet he doesn\u2019t see himself going back until he retires.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">P.E.I. is now on pace to reach 200,000 residents by 2027\u2014three years earlier than expected. The influx has become so great that residents and politicians, such as Green Party Leader Karla Bernard, provincial health minister Mark McLane, and outgoing head of the provincial health authority Michael Gardam have renewed their calls to suspend immigration targets and allow infrastructure and services to catch up. They have also advocated for the government to better align its immigration with its labour-market needs, which the province has struggled to do for years. In 2023, more than a third of immigrants to P.E.I. who passed through the PNP and the Atlantic Immigration Program had experience in food, retail and accommodations, as opposed to higher-skilled occupations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">This February, P.E.I.\u2019s Conservative government released an emergency population strategy meant to shift immigrant recruitment to those with skills in health, trades and childcare\u2014and reduce the overall number of provincial nominees by 25 per cent. Premier Dennis King admitted the province would also have to raise the threshold for many newcomers and be more selective when recruiting immigrants. At this point, less may be more: an approach to immigration that targets newcomers with specific skills, rather than indiscriminately opening doors, could improve the doctor-to-patient ratio, supercharge the construction industry and improve living conditions enough to convince more people to stay.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\"><strong>Since the pandemic,<\/strong> my family visits back home have lost all of their routine. Storefronts open and close less predictably than kitchen party doors. The sound of the city has become more polyglot, with people around me speaking Arabic, Mandarin, Punjabi and Hindi. Even the city\u2019s stage offerings are more diverse. In addition to old standbys like the <em>Anne of Green Gables<\/em> musical, the Confederation Centre for the Arts\u2019 2024 lineup will feature <em>Island Steps<\/em>, a dance show that combines Island step-dancing with Caribbean and South American dance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Charlottetown still can\u2019t brand itself as a bustling metropolis. On most afternoons, a pedestrian can walk across its downtown streets without stopping traffic. There is still no Uber. People continue to identify one another by old family names and, with only 91,000 people in Charlottetown\u2019s metro area last year, it is still among Canada\u2019s smallest urban areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">But it is no longer the small town it was. Pierre El-Hajjar, the Lebanese restaurant owner, thrives in that middle\u2014he calls it the sweet spot. The rising cost of living has made his weekly sushi outing a monthly one, but he likes hunting, fishing and camping with his kids, knowing his neighbours, and driving less than 15 minutes to work. To this day, he recommends Charlottetown as a destination to friends who are looking to move to Canada. \u201cThere is opportunity here if you like to be calm and not over-rushed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">Joe Byrne at times barely recognizes the city he returned to 31 years ago\u2014and his plantain problem is no more. The difference between now and the \u201990s, he says, is most evident on his weekly outings to St. Dunstan\u2019s Basilica, where an unprecedented diversity of background is revitalizing the congregation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"     undefined\">On the other hand, Nguyen and his family\u2014as happy as they were in Charlottetown\u2014ended up leaving not long after I spoke to them. They sold their house and moved to Vancouver this May, to be closer to Nguyen\u2019s sister. B.C.\u2019s warmer winters and relative proximity to Vietnam also nudged them westward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block wp-block-core\">\n<p class=\"    endstyle undefined\">Today, <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a> stories about runaway mortgages and clogged emergency rooms may ring more alarms than P.E.I.\u2019s more insidious foes: rapid aging and the threat of population decline. But growth still carries more promise than a march toward death, and eschewing youth and immigration would only widen the rift between the Island and Canada\u2019s melting-pot mainland. The new island needs Black barbers for Burundian families, Middle Eastern and Asian chefs for locals, and journalists to document it all. If I had grown up in this new version of P.E.I., perhaps I would have stayed. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block \">\n<div class=\"ad-free-zone laptop:px-0\">\n<div class=\"max-w-screen-desktop mx-auto px-20 tablet:px-40\">\n<div class=\"wp-newsletter-signup max-w-screen-desktop mx-auto w-full py-20 my-20 tablet:my-40 tablet:py-80&#10;          border-t-3 tablet:border-t-[6px] border-dark bg-white\">\n<div class=\"flex flex-col tablet:flex-row max-w-[800px] w-full mx-auto tablet:items-center\">\n<div class=\"flex flex-col tablet:w-7\/12 space-y-10 text-center tablet:text-left px-20\">\n<h2 class=\"text-red\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Get_the_Best_of_Macleans_straight_to_your_inbox\"><\/span>Get the Best of <em>Maclean\u2019s<\/em> straight to your inbox.<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"newsletter-subtitle font-sans text-sm leading-xm tablet:leading-smm font-lightmedium text-grey\">Sign up for news, commentary, analysis and promotions. Join 80,000+ Canadian readers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/macleans.ca\/society\/how-charlottetown-became-an-immigration-boom-town\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For more than half a decade, Charlottetown has sustained the highest immigration rates in Canada. The influx has saved P.E.I. from demographic oblivion\u2014and made it a case study in the perils of ultra-rapid growth. BY ALEX CYR PHOTOGRAPHY BY DARREN CALABRESE Copy Link Email Facebook X LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit June 17, 2024 One morning when&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":624531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cms.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/JULY-2024_Boom-Town_BY-DARREN-CALABRESE136.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}