Acropole Pizza in Pictou County is so popular it takes orders from as far away as Fort McMurray. Homesick Nova Scotians can have their favorite pizza with its famous “brown” sauce pizza delivered in two days for $100.

The fact that there’s a market to have pizza delivered to Nova Scotians who’ve gone away at a $100 a pop is a telling sign of our current economic funk.

In the last three years, Nova Scotia’s population fell by 1,833 people. The One Nova Scotia Commission says we could lose 65,000 people by 2040.

The solution?

Conventional wisdom has been to push for a dramatic increase in international immigration. The business community, provincial government and Halifax’s Mayor who is heading up the Federation of Canadian Municipalities response to the Syrian refugee crisis have all put their resources behind immigration as the solution.

But Nova Scotia is not taking in too few immigrants. And we are hardly the intolerant bunch some make us out to be. While our population is declining the number of immigrants to Nova Scotia is rising. Since 2011-12 Nova Scotia has welcomed 10,051 new immigrants from around the world.

The real problem affecting our population is that too many Nova Scotians are packing up and “going down the road.”

In the last four years, there has been a net loss of 10,240 Nova Scotians to other parts of Canada.

Most of those are young people just getting started in their careers, taking themselves and their families away to live, work and pay taxes somewhere else.

Yet despite these numbers, our politicians aren’t talking about what they can do to keep Nova Scotians in Nova Scotia. Immigration is easy for our local politicians to talk about because they don’t have responsibility for it, the federal government does. So while our provincial government is fixated on holding immigration “summits,” writing “playbooks” and complaining about provincial immigration caps, every week they waste, 25 Nova Scotians pack up and head west to other opportunities.

Areas with a growing population have a few things in common. They have a strong economy, offer well paying jobs and fiscally responsible government.

For example, Alberta added 1.5 million more people between 1996 and 2015, a 55 per cent increase. Alberta has some of the lowest income taxes in Canada and no sales tax. Or look at Saskatchewan that has permitted massive growth in the natural resources sector (something Nova Scotia has prevented) and has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada. The result is they’ve grown their population five times what Nova Scotia has since 1996.

We need to create those same advantages here at home.

We need to let people keep more of their hard earned money. Nova Scotians pay some of the highest taxes in Canada. If you earn a salary of $150,000 you’ll pay $3,397 more every year in income taxes above the national average; at $60,000 $1,496 more and on top that you’ll pay the highest sales taxes.  

We need to be well governed. Currently our government is in debt to the tune of $15,944 for every man, woman and child in the province.

Lastly, we need Employment Insurance (EI) reforms.  

Nova Scotia has a 7.8 per cent unemployment rate and over 35,000 people a month collect Employment Insurance benefits. Yet businesses complain they can’t get workers.

Unless we move to truly solve the problem of Nova Scotians leaving the province, additional immigration could exacerbate the situation. In the short term, an influx of immigrants would increase competition for jobs and drive down wages. This would make collecting entitlements like Employment Insurance or taking jobs out west more attractive.

We already have a number of natural advantages to create a population boom. There are thousands of people who are either from Nova Scotia, who’ve lived here, who love it and want to come home. So many of them want even a small piece of home that they’re willing to pay $100 to have a pizza fed-exed to them.

Let’s go bring’em home.

Kevin Lacey is Atlantic Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation