Ep. 625: Why are People Leaving British Columbia?
Guests: Jock Finlayson and Ryan Berlin
“GDP, per-capita income, private sector investment, export performance, private sector employment creation, and the state of the provincial finances have all lost ground in recent years,” states a Building BC Right report. The report's authors, noted economists Jock Finlayson and Ken Peacock, say that “the picture is sobering.”
According to Finlayson and Peacock, “[British Columbia]’s poor performance stands out in part to home grown challenges rooted in provincial policies that have raised costs, fostered uncertainty, discouraged investment, expanded the public sector at an unsustainable pace and weakened the government’s fiscal position in a dramatic way.”
While it’s tempting to blame the US trade tensions for BC’s economic malaise, the Building BC Right report states that “the data clearly shows the province’s economic under-performance predates the current tariff environment by several years.” Ryan Berlin, the VP of Intelligence & Chief Economist at Rennie, says, “Add it all up and people are voting with their feet; they’re leaving and, for the first time in 151 years, the population of the province of BC is decreasing.”
We invited Jock Finlayson and Ryan Berlin to join us for a Conversation That Matters about BC’s economy and why BC’s population dropped by more than 40,000 people.
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