Despite the recent Canadian census showing a declining population in his city, Estevan mayor Roy Ludwig is taking the glass half full approach.

Data from Statistics Canada shows a 5.5 percent population decrease in the "Energy City" from 2016-2021, with the oil industry's plunge believed to be the main factor.

"The oil sector, which has one of our main economic drivers, has been in a tail spin since basically 2014. We've been hurting on the oil side since that time," Estevan mayor Roy Ludwig said. "So it's not a surprise that we have over that length of time, from then until now, lost some of our people."

In remaining optimistic, Ludwig pointed to other areas of the economy as possible drivers in the future, including agriculture, coal mining, and power production.

"We feel that clean coal and carbon capture still has a future," Ludwig said. "We feel it can be part of the green technology."

Ludwig said the city is looking at other ways to attract new residents that go beyond the traditional economic appeal, but declined to go into specifics.

"There continues to be opportunity in other areas that we will be working on, we have worked on, we'll continue to work on, to create more opportunities in our community," he said.

"Some of these things we're working on...we're getting closer to bringing them to fruition. But until we do, I'd hate to make false promises."

For now, Ludwig says he and his council are taking a measured, cautious approach.

"We're still cautiously optimistic. We have a great economic development committee locally as well as provincially," he said. "So we're working in both of those areas to gain more economic activity, more economic development activity, and some of that is bearing fruit."

Ludwig added that he pays more attention to the medical numbers, which he says are more accurate than the census.

"If you go by the medical numbers, we're not in that bad of shape. We're not down that much," he said.

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