What will Yellowknife’s population be in 25 years’ time?

As part of its work to create an updated community plan for the next 25 years, the City of Yellowknife hired consultants to estimate the territorial capital’s population between now and 2050.

At the end of 2024, Yellowknife had an estimated population of 21,788.

For the past 20 years or so, the city’s population has seen gradual but not explosive growth. For example, in 2011, Yellowknife crossed the 20,000 threshold with a population that year of 20,054. The figure has gradually increased since.

Consultants Stantec were asked to examine how the city’s population is expected to change over the next quarter of a century. They reported back to city council on Monday.

Stantec used a method named cohort conversion that splits the existing population into five-year groups, then advances them along the age scale while adjusting the birth rate, tweaking each five-year “cohort” to account for expected migration, and analyzing expected survival rates.

The consultants produced three results – one each for low, medium and high growth, depending on what happens to the city over the next 25 years.

In a low-growth scenario, not many big infrastructure projects happen, the proposed military investment in Yellowknife doesn’t do a lot, mining keeps declining and the high cost of living drives some people away.

Under medium growth, things keep going in a way that mirrors “the most recent trends of the last five years,” Stantec’s Zoe Morrison told council.

High growth represents “optimistic conditions or transformative events” where just-about everything pans out in a way that stimulates the economy, brings people to Yellowknife and successfully houses everyone.

At the low end of the spectrum, Yellowknife has 22,979 people by 2050. The high end would result in 26,659. (Even the high-end figure would keep Yellowknife significantly smaller than the current size of Whitehorse, which has 30,000-plus residents.)

The medium option, which Stantec thinks is a “reasonable estimate” for what will actually happen, provides a 2050 Yellowknife population figure of 24,574 people.

That outcome would mean adding just over 100 people each year for the next 25 years.

Why the work was done

The city wants this information because if you know 100 more people a year can be expected to need services, you can make sure your community plan accommodates that.

Stantec’s report – the full version is available on the city’s website – goes into detail about what the implications are for housing and land requirements.

Access to land is a big issue for the city, which says the territorial government isn’t handing over enough land within the municipal boundary to meet Yellowknife’s needs.

Mayor Ben Hendriksen recently made that issue a focal point of his “state of the city” address to business leaders.

Stantec thinks Yellowknife will need 1,032 extra housing units to accommodate the move to a population of 24,574 by 2050, translating to 37 extra hectares of residential land.

More commercial land will be needed too, though Stantec thinks Yellowknife already has quite a large amount of commercial land per resident and so might not require too much more.

An example given was that the existing Canadian Tire could probably serve 25,000 people just as well as it’s serving the current population, and the same might be applicable to many businesses.

Welcome, climate refugees?

Stantec acknowledged that its work largely relies on an extrapolation of past trends to predict the future.

That means some things that haven’t really happened in the past might be harder to factor in.

Councillor Cat McGurk hit upon one example when raising the prospect of climate refugees.

That could mean people coming from other hard-hit areas to find relief in Yellowknife, or it could feasibly mean people leaving Yellowknife if the climate impacts here are worse than elsewhere.

“We didn’t add population to our models to reflect climate refugees, but certainly it’s something we talked about quite a bit and considered whether, overall, it would have a positive or negative impact in Yellowknife,” consultant Morrison told McGurk.

“We didn’t specifically consider that we’d be seeing a lot of in or out-migration based on impacts of climate change.”

“Globally,” McGurk observed in response, “there’s still a lot of work to be done on establishing data around that – though we do know people are already moving.”

Another difficulty is meshing together multiple existing forecasts for what the city will need.

A separate assessment published a year ago concluded that Yellowknife needed 1,060 more housing units by 2035. Stantec came back recommending 1,032 units by 2050, a discrepancy noted by councillor Tom McLennan and which Stantec could not immediately explain in detail without assessing both methodologies.

Morrison did, though, say Stantec had relied on an understanding that “densification would increase” over time when producing its figures for the land and number of units required.

“We did take the current situation,” she said. “Yellowknife is quite a bit more dense than other communities of its size, but we assumed it would even get more dense as the policy focus would focus on infill.”

An early sense of residents’ 2050 vision

City council also received a presentation on Monday from a separate team of consultants who have begun documenting residents’ feedback on what they want from Yellowknife in 2050.

The city started asking that question earlier in the summer. Consultants heard from 210 people at pop-up events during the likes of weekly farmers’ markets, as well as receiving 74 questionnaire responses and about 30 other pieces of feedback.

Initial results can be found on the city’s dedicated page for its community plan update.

There are no real surprises in the vision the consultants sketched out from the feedback received.

They talked about residents wanting a city that has kept its “unique identity” while embracing innovation, balancing intensification with the preservation of “cherished natural landscapes, pristine lakeshores, and human-made assets that together define our city’s unique northern character.”

There was an emphasis on having a “wide network of trails” and a culture of active living, plus a “revitalized, safe and welcoming downtown” that is considered a place for everyone. Affordable housing, economic opportunities and inclusion were also themes from the feedback.

More detailed focus groups are now taking place on specific issues like land use, housing, environment and infrastructure.