The title inspires visions of mystery, intrigue and dramatic radio serials from the 1950s. That’s somewhat appropriate, given that they are a group of people that the Municipality of Jasper knows precious little about. We’re talking, of course, about the shadow population.

Who are these people? That basic, establishing question should be straightforward enough, and it is, if you’re asking the Municipality of Jasper. They define the shadow group as those temporary residents of Jasper who do not turn up in the federal census results. That is, those seasonal workers who live in Jasper, use its infrastructre and services, but who don’t consider their permanent address to end with postal code T0E 1E0. This group is one of the driving forces behind this month’s municipal census, which will attempt to arrive at a more accurate population count than the federal census held on May 16.

For the municipality, the central concern of the shadow population is an economic matter. The town’s bottom line is affected if these short-term Jasperites use services but are not included in the figures that calculate grant payouts from the province in particular. Indeed, the shadow population argument figures centrally in the 2005 report that evaluated local municipal finance issues.

But for Ginette Marcoux-Frigon, the director of Jasper’s Adult Learning Council, the residential definition is too narrow. Her version of the “shadow population” includes some permanent residents of Jasper, and is based on an entirely different way of approaching the concept of who in the community fits this description.

“When we talk about the shadow population, we need to include the underemployed, the undereducated, the ethnically diverse and the marginalized in the community,” Frigon argues. “We target these groups with subsidies and support, but we aren’t finding that they take advantage of that. Maybe if they felt like part of the community we might see more of them.”

One of the issues that’s commonly recognized, no matter which definition for the shadow population is being used, is that there is a lack of information about the group’s members. The question of how to arrive at a more complete understanding of their needs and patterns of use is an important one, Frigon said.

“We want to know why they aren’t accessing these courses. Is it that they don’t know? Is literacy an issue?” For a group that has improving literacy central to its mandate, it stands to reason that the Adult Learning Council would be intrigued by that aspect of the shadow population question. They aren’t the only ones in town wanting to know more.

“I don’t think that one ever has enough information,” said Kathleen Waxer, the director of Community and Family Services for the municipality. “It’s an ongoing situation.”

Waxer tends to define the shadow population along the residency parameters outlined by the municipality, but agrees with Frigon that the marginalized residents of Jasper, whether short or long term, need to be provided with services.

“It’s part of what community outreach is all about,” Waxer said. “We make an attempt to make services easier to understand and to access.” That’s not always easy, she acknowledges.

“I’d never say that we blanketed the entire community. We are always adaptable though, and changing so we are available to the community.”

It can be difficult to develop good contacts with some of these groups, especially among those who are only in Jasper for a short time.

“We are in constant discussion with employers, with the people who do access our services, and we do what we can through the census-takers and things like that,” Waxer said. “I’d say we are very aware of people in these situations and we do what we can. We have the community dinners, we run orientation sessions for new staff, we publish the survival guide. These are all geared towards the young people.”

None of these measures are unknown to Frigon, and many of the initiatives conducted by the municipality tend to focus, with reason, on the younger, short-term population that would fit in the more specific definition of shadow population. It’s those on the margins of our understanding of the issue that Jasper needs to be focusing on, she argued.

“I do think there is a lack of effort in specific terms when it comes to inviting some of these marginalized groups to participate in the community,” she said. 

What happens next? Frigon hopes to do a collaborative needs assessement in the fall that will go some way towards defining the needs of the broader “shadow population” in Jasper.