Amalgamation

[jeffster]

Kinda like Waterloo does when it over-counts by a staggering 30,000 because they add student population. In a year like 2020, those students won't even be there for 1/2 the year. I can't think of any other city that does that, until you mentioned those twin cities.

In a normal year, students are always here (OK, fewer in Spring term, May-August, but still a substantial number).

That being said, temporary residents should be counted in a standard way, which should probably be figured out by Statistics Canada in connection with the census. A similar but different issue arises in connection with seasonal residents of cottage country.

Temporary residents should count, because they are part of the size of the city — in the extreme, imagine that our city existed only to support the universities, and 80% of our population was students — but on the other hand they shouldn’t count twice; if I add up the size of every locality in the province I should get the provincial population.

For one thing, the census doesn't not count temporary residents, be it students or cottage dwellers or seasonal workers.

My point was, though, that only Waterloo does this. Kingston, London, Guelph, are all university cities. They don't add university population. For one thing, as you pointed out, you run the risk of counting a person twice. You also run the risk of counting commuter students. Even Conestoga College has a large FT student population, those numbers are not added to Kitchener's, Brantford's or Cambridge' numbers. But they are added to Waterloo.

At the same time, then, should the city deduct citizens that are perhaps out of city attending schools? I guarantee that Waterloo doesn't. And likely no city does.

But one thing I do believe, if you are going to be counting temp residents, who might be there for no more than 180 days per year (as I guarantee many of the students go home for weekends, holidays, summer, etc), you then need to factor them into other numbers. For example, when Waterloo talks about their household income being higher than Cambridge or Kitchener -- it is NOT when you factor in student population. They'd be on the low end.  They can't have it both ways.

First picture, 2009, Waterloo had 119,000. 10 years later, it's at 105,000. The sign changed downward because Waterloo had changed the sign prior to 2009 to reflect student population. When the census was done, MTO reverted to sign to provincial standards (Waterloo had zero rights in changing the provincial sign in the first place). After the MTO did this, for some unknown reason, the city of Waterloo removed the signage going into Kitchener.

2009
   

2019