OTTAWA - The environment may rank No. 1 in polls meant to tap the national consciousness but Canadians are choosing auto-dependent suburbs and exurbs over big city life in staggering numbers, the first major release from the 2006 census shows.
The trend, fuelled in part by young families seeking larger, yet affordable, homes outside of the urban centres from which they draw salaries, is raising concern among academics and environmentalists who say urban sprawl cannot survive the "carbon-constrained future.''
The 11.1 per cent population growth rate posted in peripheral municipalities, those that surround the core cities of Canada's 33 census metropolitan areas, more than doubled the national growth rate of 5.4 per cent, according to figures released Tuesday by Statistics Canada.
The fastest growing municipality was Milton, Ont., a classic example of an exurb -- a term coined in the 1950s to describe that place where affluent suburb meets countryside. Milton, some 55 kilometres west of Toronto, posted a 71.4 per cent growth rate with a population of 53,939 compared to 31,471 in 2001.
By contrast, the average growth rate for metropolitan core areas across Canada was 4.2 per cent while Toronto grew only 0.9 per cent.
"We certainly do see the urban spread. We are seeing people move out from the central municipalities into the surrounding areas,'' said Anil Arora, director general of the census program branch at Statistics Canada.
"Certainly we can see there are some people that are looking for that mix of country living and they don't mind the commute in.''
Milton has seen an explosion of development in the shadow of the Niagara Escarpment, where rugged hiking trails and maple syrup farms are found just minutes away from big box stores and chain restaurants. According to the town's official website, Milton has some 15,000 urban households alongside 4,500 or so rural ones.
"The majority of the people who are moving into the Milton area are from the. . . Toronto area (looking) for that rural, suburban, urban lifestyle,'' said Mayor Gordon Krantz.
While Krantz, who has held the mayoral post for 27 years, said school and park construction are keeping up with Milton's growth, he noted that the town is about two to three years behind in road building.
Transportation routes were cited by Statistics Canada on Tuesday as the arteries that support the spread of urban populations, including the Laurentian Autoroute in Montreal, Ottawa's Highway 417, numerous 400 series highways that service the Toronto area, and Alberta's Calgary Trail.
Urban sprawl and its dependence on the automobile is a lifestyle that can't be sustained, warned Stephen Hazell of the Sierra Club of Canada.
"That urban form is not going to serve us very well in a carbon-constrained future,'' said Hazell, executive director of the environmental group.
"We're going to have less fossil fuels around. What fossil fuels we do have are going to be more expensive. So people who are living out in the suburbs are going to be stranded.''
Well aware of the environmental alarm bells being sounded, many young parents say a red-hot real estate market has simply made it economically prohibitive to live in the urban core.
In 2004, Colleen Hebel and her husband Jeff decided that the small attic apartment they were renting in Toronto was too snug and went looking to buy. After testing the city's pricey real estate waters the couple, who now have a 23-month-old daughter named Ella, decided to look further afield.
"Everything was either too expensive, out of our price range, was a fixer upper or was too small,'' Hebel, 33, recalled of her house hunting in Toronto. "So we headed west.''
While their home in Milton is just minutes away from conservation areas, farms and the escarpment the Hebels are also far from their jobs, a fact that sees both of them commute to work in separate cars.
In Canada's western provinces the growth story has been much the same.
Okotoks, Alta., snuggled in a bucolic setting just 18 kilometres south of Calgary's city limits, posted a population of 17,145 -- up 46.7 per cent. It's the second fastest growing community in Canada and sees more than 30 per cent of its population commute to an urban centre for work.
Airdrie, Alta., grew 41.8 per cent, Brampton, Ont., was up 33.3 per cent, and Saint-Lazare, Que., was up 32 per cent to round out the top five.
Alberta's unprecedented economic boom saw its surrounding municipalities grow an average of 29.2 per cent.
"The suburbs (surrounding Calgary) are just booming. . . Vancouver is kind of the same. Edmonton, similar,'' said Hazell.
The census figures, which governments draw upon to, among other things, allocate resources and set policy, provide an opportunity for action, said Byron Miller, who heads the urban growth program at the University of Calgary.
"So much of the policy development is focused on things like improving environmental technology, switching to cleaner sources of fuel, basically a variety of different technical fixes,'' said Miller, an associate professor of geography.
"There's very little attention being paid to the way we structure our patterns of consumption.''
How Canada patterns its urban growth will have implications for decades to come, Miller added.
"Either we can get it right now or we can continue with our current practices, which create very automobile dependent forms of development.''
Among possible solutions, Hazell said provincial governments can pass legislation that imposes clear boundaries for urban development that can't be circumvented at the local level.
"For the people who are already living out in the suburbs, the answer has to be try to divert public investment away from more roads toward more public transit,'' he added.
For policy makers to do nothing and let urban sprawl go unchecked is unacceptable, said Hazell.
"It exacerbates all of the problems that we have with the climate change,'' he said. "It makes it much more difficult for Canada to start reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.''
For Heather Farmer, a married mother of two who works as a corporate event organizer in Toronto and lives some 60 kilometres east in Whitby -- the 10th fastest growing Canadian community -- the lengthy commute to work has an upside.
"It's the 45 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes home again at night that I actually have time to myself,'' said Farmer, 35, who travels on a provincially operated commuter train.
"I can read a book, I can take a nap, I can do whatever the heck I want. Once I'm at home it's go, go, go with the kids.''
