Our Chamber wishes to inform our membership of the Government of PEI’s release of a Population Framework and a Housing Strategy, as labour force and housing are consistently major concerns we hear from our membership.
Population Framework
- Titled “Growing Together: A Population Framework for Prince Edward Island”, this framework aims to guide and inform provincial policies, investments, and projections.
- The framework is predicting PEI’s population to reach 200,000 by 2030.
- With the release of this framework, the government also announced it intends to reduce its use of the allotted annual federal immigration candidates nominated by 25% for 2024. The province says it’s focused on aligning nominations with key sectors including trades, childcare, and healthcare.
The framework focuses on five priorities around population growth:
- Expanding critical infrastructure and public services
- Building and retaining PEI’s workforce
- Supporting land-use planning and environmental sustainability
- Enhancing community connectedness and a sense of belonging
- Long-term planning and reporting
Some actions for the Population Framework include, but are not limited to:
- Dedicate investments to support capacity building with organizations and employers to provide diverse and inclusive workplaces.
- Increase the number of experiential learning opportunities with the private sector.
- Refocus provisional immigration streams to address workforce needs in critical sectors and high-demand occupations.
- Ensuring regular communications and reporting to the public and stakeholders on key metrics and progress, including an online dashboard.
- Ensuring that planning and policy decisions consider and reflect PEI’s changing demographics and the needs of all residents.
- Developing a cross-government committee responsible for this framework to ensure focus and alignment of actions and priorities across government.
Note: over the last two years, our Chamber has advocated for the province to re-visit its population strategy and ensure provincial supports are in place to meet the federal government’s targets, including recruitment and retainment of immigrants that align with workforce needs.
Housing Strategy
- Titled “Building Together – Prince Edward Island Housing Strategy 2024-2029,” the 5-year housing strategy has three priorities: speeding up new housing construction, building more affordable homes, and providing housing supports for the most vulnerable.
Targets:
Acceleration
- Growing housing starts to new levels towards the required average annual 2,000 units.
- Achieve and maintain a healthy market vacancy rate of 2-4%.
Affordability
- Explore opportunities to increase the supply of permanently affordable rental housing through acquisitions and new constructions.
- Prioritize the most in need on the PEI Social Housing Registry while working to eliminate the registry.
- Reduce the number of Islanders with a core housing need, spending more than 30% of their before-tax household income on housing.
- Provide support to first-time home buyers.
- Increase the number of participants and funds invested to help keep people in their homes.
Vulnerability
- Work to end chronic homelessness.
- Increase the availability of supportive housing units.
Note: our Chamber has advocated for, and will continue to advocate for, the acceleration of housing development and for the province to work closely with private-sector developers, municipalities, and other relevant stakeholders (including our Chamber) to increase the overall supply of housing units in PEI.