COLUMN: Nanaimo faces challenges as city grows

It should come as no big surprise that the population of Nanaimo has ballooned to 112,600 people as of last year, and is projected to grow to approximately 121,941 by 2030.
Nanaimo’s economic development officer Amrit Manhas recently revealed those numbers as part of the city’s annual state of the economy report for 2025.
When I first moved to the city in 1996, the population was just a little over 70,000, so now we have an additional 42,600 people living here since then, which is qu