Save Byrne Creek Forest East

I prefer "deceptive work" to "guesswork" to characterize Corrigan/Pelletier's population growth projections. They know what they are doing. Not the projected population growth drives housing development, as they want us believe; rather, the projected housing development capacity, as defined by the City of Burnaby itself, drives population growth. They know how to play this cynical game very well.

When I first read through their population growth projections, as published in the Burnaby Housing Profile 2016 (p. 94), I had to chuckle. To make sense of the City of Burnaby's desired population of 345,000 people by census year 2041, they literally plotted three different data sources with three different projection/estimation methods onto the same graph. Pelletier's graph starts with the Census 2011 w/out undercount consideration of above 2% (223,218), then moves to BC Stats' 2015 population estimate based on the Component/Cohort-Survival method (238,209), and to arrive at their desired 2041 population of 345,000 people, as you pointed out, a simple-minded linear extrapolation from past growth did the trick. Darrell Huff’s 1954 classic “How to Lie with Statistics” certainly is as relevant today as it was back then. This "apples to oranges to nuts" comparision, so to speak, does not make sense by any statistical standard.