Population growth projections have recently emerged as a controversy. The Conference Board of Canada released a projection that the population of the province will drop to 482,000 in 2035.  Danny Williams declared the projection "bullshit" and city councillor Tom Hann also voiced criticism.

For fun, I decided to do my own projections using a very simple model under a few different scenarios.  In the models below, I assume:

1. Every person dies on their 80th birthday.*
2. There is an equal number of males and females in each age group.

* To be consistent I ignore everyone currently over 80 years old, so my population in 2013 is 507,000 instead of the actual 527,000.  This makes no difference to the projections, because 80 year olds don't have children.

Here is the chart.  The scenarios are explained below.