New Towns

The New Towns program was a settlement incentive program of the 1980s and 1990s, aimed at driving settlement of the north of Albion and developing resource-oriented settlements in potential growth clusters identified by the Boreal Belt Land Survey.

In some respects drawing parallels with the New Towns movement in the United Kingdom, the policy led to the development of a number of planned communities of varying sizes and levels of success throughout the north of Albion, particularly in the provinces of Muskegon, Kisatchewan, Athabasca and Stikine.

Background
The New Towns initiative was a spinoff of the Boreal Belt Land Survey, an initiative pursued by the Labour governments of Prime Ministers Leonard Jeffrey and Grace Burns. The survey, promoted by Second World War veteran Ron Breckinridge and accepted by Jeffrey, was aimed at identifying potential resource clusters around which northern communities could be established, part of a broad legacy project intended to settle the north.

Initial land surveys focused on the Athabasca tar sands and other oil and gas-producing regions in the northern prairie provinces, identifying numerous hydrocarbon clusters which could be exploited. Settlement of the Peace River area began to accelerate in the 1970s as the governments of Athabasca and Stikine promoted investment in their provinces' oil and gas exploration sectors. Early communities to benefit from provincial Boreal Belt investments included Wellington and Peacetown in Athabasca, Fort St. John and Blackstone in Stikine, and Prince Albert in Kisatchewan.

Ring of Fire Development Act and New Towns Act
The Boreal Belt Land Survey was inherited by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Longfield in 1982. The Grits were initially inclined to terminate investment in the program, viewing it as wasteful. However, early in Longfield's mandate, reports emerged of the discovery of the Muskegon Ring of Fire, a massive mineral deposit underlying eastern Muskegon. The region was quickly identified as a potential mineral extraction supercluster, one acclaimed by Natural Resources Minister David Donlevy as "the oil sands of the east."

In 1983, Longfield's government passed the Ring of Fire Development Act, rapidly opening up the area to development permits. Despite resistance from the local Cree, a bidding process began to determine mining rights in the region. Permits were ultimately won by two conglomerates, Albichrome and Parabola Chromite. Negotiations with Webequie First Nation ensued to fully secure mining rights, ultimately resulting in the Pinawa Accord, an agreement to establish strong local benefit requirements and First Nations hiring quotas to ensure that the community around McFaulds Lake would enjoy the benefits of mining profits.

This investment ultimately led to the establishment of the mining community of Miskwaham on the Muketei River in 1985, initially as a company town for Albichrome and Parabola.

The polling success of the government's rapid move to exploit this new natural resource, coupled with the lingering effects of the economic slowdown created by the Arab Republic oil price wars of the early 1980s, incentivized the Longfield government to invest in job creation. The Liberals introduced and passed the New Towns Act of 1983, identifying numerous resource clusters and providing for three types of grants:


 * New Towns Development Grants for corporations able to demonstrate capacity to establish a natural resource extraction operation in an identified cluster.
 * New Towns Residency Grants for citizens willing to relocate to an identified New Town.
 * New Towns Small Business Support Grants for entrepreneurs willing to start a non-resource-oriented business in an identified resource cluster.

These grants had several goals: To drive resource investment to thinly-populated northern regions, to strengthen Albion's economy, to relieve congested job markets in urban areas struggling with unemployment due to the gas price wars and the associated recession, and to wean Albion off of foreign oil. An unspoken goal of the project was to promote the movement of entrepreneurs and professionals into areas of provinces with a higher concentration of Liberal voters, setting the stage to eventually create new Liberal ridings in the northern reaches of the country.

List of New Towns
Major New Towns (population above 20,000) are indicated in bold text. Communities are listed in a west-to-east order.

Yukon

 * Sagavanirktok (ex-Prudhoe Bay) - Pop'n, 75,000. The largest city in northern Albion, developed along the lines of the Soviet oil city of Novy Urengoy. Many of its residents are seasonal owing to the grim climate. The city is the epicentre of the North Slope oil extraction economy. Its largest employer is Noroil.

Stikine

 * Kichikan - Pop'n, 17,000. A port city on Revillagigedo Island, home to two Vigor Shipbuilding drydocks. It is supported by tourism, forestry and a Western Pulp paper mill.
 * Iskut - Pop'n, 2,500. A majority Tahltan town which has grown up around a geothermal power plant established in 2012. As of 2020, it is considered a northern boom town.
 * Dease Lake - Pop'n, 1,000. An example of a failed New Town. Initially the site of a major asbestos mine, Dease Lake grew to more than 2,000 people in the 1980s, but declined following 1995, when Albion banned asbestos.
 * New Aiyansh - Pop'n, 3,000. A majority Nisga'a town in the Nass Valley and a key local rail terminus. Plans are afoot to develop a thriving geothermal cluster in the area.
 * Fort St. John - Pop'n, 35,000. A major rail hub in southeast Stikine and an important oil and gas production centre. Also specializing in canola and barley agriculture, forestry and manufacture of wood products such as oriented strand board.
 * Dawson Creek - Pop'n, 2,900. A well-known centre for canola, but one that lost out to Blackstone as the main New Towns hub in eastern Stikine.
 * Blackstone - Pop'n, 83,000. The primary hub in the Peace River Country. Initially specializing in oil and gas extraction and canola and barley farming, it has since grown as a regional services hub, logistics centre and wood products manufacturing hub.

Fraser

 * Prince Rupert - Pop'n, 147,000. Albion's major Middle Mainland northwestern port, and the largest between Granville and Nakanuk. It has since expanded onto Digby Island. Economic drivers include oil and gas refining, seaport operations, forestry, services, shipbuilding and maintenance. It has a truly exceptional natural harbour.
 * Kitimat - Pop'n, 21,000. A refinery town and the terminus of the Trans-Albion Pipeline, though it stands secondary to Prince Rupert as a Middle Mainland port.
 * Prince George - Pop'n, 68,000. A major hub in northern Fraser, both for highway and rail transit. It is a primary centre for forestry and pulp-and-paper production, as well as home to a key radar monitoring station.

Athabasca

 * Peacetown - Pop'n, 32,000. Initially this town lost out to Blackstone as a key hub, but it has been growing with exploitation of the Peace River oil sands by Shell Albion. A deal is in place to build a new nuclear power plant in the region.
 * Fort Vermilion - Pop'n, 3,100. The uppermost key farm town on the Peace River, it has experienced steady growth as a hub of canola, barley and rye farming.
 * Wellington - Pop'n, 111,000. The centre of the Alban tar sands industry. Together with nearby Blackfields, it is part of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. It has developed a secondary economy as a services hub for the Athabascan north. Sometimes referred to semi-seriously as Mordor due to its harsh winter climate and the geophysical effects of tar sand extraction.
 * Scobiac - Pop'n, 14,000. A growing farm region with a substantial population of Cree.
 * Cold Lake - Pop'n, 15,000. A military community that grew up around AFB Cold Lake, a major Royal Air Force of Albion base. It is a key station for AF-14 Tomcat squadrons.

Kisatchewan

 * Buffalo River - Pop'n, 1,500. An all-Dene town north of Bolsover, home to cold-weather barley farmers, primarily. A New Town that has struggled to take off.
 * Mistohay Lake - Pop'n, 2,000. Located on the Beaver River, an oil operation here failed to strike pay dirt, and the community persists as a sleepy farm town subordinate to Bolsover.
 * Bolsover - Pop'n, 12,000. New Towns grants led successfully to the establishment of canola farms and a plank production facility here. It has achieved city status and is steadily growing.
 * Kingsmere - Pop'n, 1,500. Newly-founded on a patch of luvisolic soil on Kingsmere Lake, it has struggled to grow at more than a slow pace.
 * Prince Albert - Pop'n, 40,000. One of the larger northern cities. Its economy has diversified and is rounded out by a pulp and paper mill, agriculture, diamond mining, services and logistics. It lies at the northern extreme of Albion's aspen parkland belt.
 * Nipawin - Pop'n, 4,500. Home to a hydroelectric dam that provides power to a large swath of northeastern Kisatchewan.
 * Waskahikanihk - Pop'n, 2,500. A majority-Cree town, formerly known as Cumberland House, one of the most important Hudson's Bay Company fur-trading posts. An example of a New Towns failure: While the town has made it onto the map, its growth has stalled out.

Mackenzie Territory

 * Inuvik - Pop'n, 38,000. Far and away the largest city in the Mackenzie Territory. Inuvik acts as an oil and gas exploration centre. While it existed before New Towns, it has grown the fastest in the 2000s as oil exploration in the north has picked up.
 * Fort Smith - Pop'n, 19,500. On the Athabascan border. The New Towns program funded barley, rye and onion farming operations by a Dene farm collective as well as the establishment of tourism promotion for the kayaking industry. It is basically Albion's Yakutsk in terms of climate.

Muskegon

 * Rockford - Pop'n, 8,500. Located just on the border with Kisatchewan. It is another example of a New Town in decline. The actual town was founded in the 1920s but boomed in the 1970s to a population of 15,000, but that has declined in the face of mine closures. It remains a centre for copper and zinc mining and smelting.
 * Paskoyac - Pop'n, 36,000 (58,000 regional). Part of the broader Rural Municipality of Delta, a rare area of good northern soil in the Saskatchewan River Delta. Its economy is built on farming, logistics, services and mining.
 * Bifrost - Pop'n, 8,000. The centre of Muskegon's Little Iceland community, located on Lake Winnipeg. Its economy is built on a hydroelectric dam, lake fisheries and rail traffic servicing.
 * Rollington - Pop'n, 25,000. Founded in 1948 but experiencing its apogee in the 1980s and 1990s at a population of nearly 30,000. Declining nickel prices have seen Rollington's fortunes abate somewhat, but the area remains a major centre for Anco nickel mining and acts as a service centre and government hub.
 * Gillam - Pop'n, 5,500. Home to three hydroelectric dams that power major parts of Muskegon.
 * Churchill - Pop'n, 166,000. Albion's major port on the East Coast and the terminus of both the Alban Pacific Railway and the Muskegon Shield Railway. It developed initially as an entrepot and a hub for Alban wheat exports, but has since diversified its economy to include military servicing, shipbuilding, tourism, fisheries, food processing and education.
 * Miskwaham - Pop'n, 50,000. The primary eastern success story of the New Towns program, developed by the Ring of Fire Development Act of 1983. It is at the centre of the broader Regional Municipality of Matawa but comprises about 90% of its population. Serviced by the new Keewatin Motorway.