The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Just call it the True North Young and Free. Canada's overall population is getting older, but not so in the northern part of the country. The Conference Board of Canada has found the number of children in some northern regions can reach as high as one third of all residents, a number virtually unheard of in most of the South. The Conference Board's "Kids These Days" map, part of its ongoing Centre for the North map series, illustrates how young the northern population is compared to that of the rest of Canada. "Virtually every facet of social and economic policy Ð education, recreation, health care, infrastructure, employment opportunities and pension plans Ð must change when the balance between young and old shifts," said Derrick Hynes, director of the Centre for the North. "Health care for the elderly and funding pension plans will be dominant issues in Southern Canada for the next few decades. In contrast, Northern Canadians will be addressing the needs of a far younger population." Population According to the 2006 census, more than 20 per cent of the population in most of Canada's northern regions was under the age of 15. In contrast, only a handful of areas in Southern Canada had 20 per cent of their residents in this age cohort. The youth of the northern population is most apparent in northern Saskatchewan, Nunavut and northern Manitoba, where 30 per cent or more of the residents were under the age of 15 in 2006. Nationally, the population is aging rapidly. The Conference Board of Canada predicts that the number of Canadians aged 65 years or over will surpass the number of children 15 or younger for the first time in the country's history in 2019. In the North, however, the number of children will still be more than double the number of seniors. In 2009, 4.7 million Canadians were 65 or older, about 13.9 per cent of the total population. By 2025, the Conference Board's long-term economic outlook projects that Canadians 65 and older will make up 20 per cent of the population. By comparison, only 7.2 per cent of the population in Nunavut is expected to be 65 or older by 2025, while the share of the population 65 and older will be about 12.5 per cent in the Northwest Territories and 18.4 per cent in the Yukon. Ð Compiled from a Conference Board of Canada news release.
