I think it's important to state that one of the key impediments to economic growth for our province is population, having a critical mass. A population of 146,000 presents its own challenges. We recognize that a few thousand more people would make a big difference in terms of economic growth. I think it's a key cornerstone of the provincial government's strategy to increase growth, but it's ours as well.
We see it a couple of ways. Number one, there's this idea of bringing people who are not born and raised in Prince Edward Island to our province—new Canadians. We've worked with the chamber of commerce and the University of Prince Edward Island and Holland College on international student recruitment efforts, with third parties around retention and settlement services for island entrepreneurs, and with businesses, because many of these folks who are coming from the Far East are looking to invest in our province. So it's a matter of trying to link those people up with potential partners in the province. We have a program with the Charlottetown chamber of commerce called P.E.I. connectors that is doing just that.
The other piece, Chair, would be around population growth in the context of creating opportunities for young islanders to stay at home. We've seen some progress in that regard; there's still much more to do. One of the ways we see achieving that is by diversifying the economy, to bring the traditional industries to value-added, where they're able to afford to pay higher wages.
We think Prince Edward Island has all the amenities to attract people and to retain people, but clearly economic growth is important. Our focus has been on new start-ups. With the provincial government, we just established the Startup Zone in Charlottetown, which right now has 20 new start-up companies in an incubator-style environment where they can collaborate, work together, and create partnerships; but also they can access business services that they require to get their products to market and to support them.
I think it's a multi-pronged approach to support population growth that is very key to economic success.