With the federal election into
its home stretch and the vote scheduled for tomorrow, voters in Thunder Bay have
to decide who to vote for. Needless to say,
it has been a disappointing election given that the major parties – as well as
the smaller ones – have presented grandiose expenditure visions that are for
the most part fiscally unsustainable. Moreover,
much of the campaign has been not on policy but on opportunistic promises with major efforts expended
on digging up dirt on opponents, mixing it with a little self-righteous water and then spattering
it about in the hope that it sticks somewhere.
When it comes
to making a ballot-box decision, the prevailing sentiment on the street seems
to be that it is hard to choose from a set of equally unpalatable national parties. So, the next best approach might be: let us look
locally and make the decision, based not on what might be best for the country,
but what might be best for Thunder Bay. Here too, the answer is really quite muddy as
ultimately what is best for Thunder Bay is making sure that at least one of the
ridings is with whoever ends up as the governing party. However, even that is a difficult game to
play given that we are probably looking at a minority government situation. And such strategic behaviour is made even more difficult by Thunder Bay's historical genetic aversion to any federal choice but Liberal - except when they seek to punish the Liberals by voting New Democrat. Thunder Bay has not elected a federal conservative since the 1930s but then oddly wonders why conservative governments do not grant its wishes.
In terms of what is
best for Thunder Bay, needless to say a government that promotes economic
growth and diversification is always a safe bet but that can often only be judged
years after the fact. The current north
side incumbent who is also a member of the present governing party certainly
points to the last four years as a period of economic growth for Thunder Bay and northwestern
Ontario in part due to the “millions
of dollars coming into our area” which she no doubt ascribes to her
government and her role as a Minister of the Crown.
Quantitatively assessing
growth in Thunder Bay and the region is never easy but a glance at employment
numbers is one way of providing an evidence-based attempt on how much growth
there has been. Between 2014 and 2018,
total employment in Thunder Bay has indeed grown by 3.6 percent – from 61,500
to 63,700 jobs – which is actually not bad given that Ontario over the same
period increased by 5.3 percent.
However, when employment is examined in a longer-term framework using
the period from 2001 to 2018 – see Figure 1 – it is still within the
traditional employment range of the last two decades. We basically bounce up and down between
60,000 and 65,000 jobs and never seem to break out of that corridor in any
sustained fashion. Between 2001 and
2018, Thunder Bay’s employment grew 3.4 percent while Ontario grew 22
percent.
What is also
interesting as shown in Figure 2 is when employment growth by occupational category over the period
2014 to 2018 is examined. The most employment growth since
2014 has been in occupations related to arts and culture (26.7%), health
(22.2%), natural and applied sciences (17.6%), manufacturing (13.3%) and law,
social and government services (12%).
However, sales and services, business and finance, and construction have
all seen declines. As for the manufacturing
resurgence, given the 550 jobs slated to disappear at Bombardier, manufacturing
is poised to continue the decline that has been underway since 2001.
So, has Thunder Bay’s
employment grown over the last four years?
Yes, but there are important qualifications given the dynamic nature and
unique features of any local economy. Here in Thunder Bay jobs are both created and
destroyed but in almost perfect balance over time so as to keep total
employment locked within a narrow corridor.
This corridor has remained the same for decades and Thunder Bay remains
in an overall total employment stasis despite the efforts of two growth plans - one provincial and the most recent federal. This
is unlike Ontario as a whole where jobs are both created and destroyed but on
net over the last 20 years many more jobs have been created than have been
destroyed. In choosing who to vote more
tomorrow, voters need to think long and hard on which party they believe can actually open the door to getting us outside our historical corridor of
employment stasis.