As the 2024 municipal budget season wraps up, it is worth looking at where Thunder Bay has been going over the last decade in terms of the composition of its total municipal expenditures (all spending, tax and grant supported, capital and operating). Using multi-year financial data (2002 to 2022) from the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs Financial Information Review, one can obtain an overview of the trends. In 2012, total municipal expenditures in Thunder Bay were 505.4 million dollars and in 2022 they were 599.8 million making for an increase of 19 percent. Compared to some other municipalities, this was actually a rather modest increase as over the same period, Greater-Sudbury saw an increase of 41 percent, Windsor 26 percent, Barrie 29 percent and Kingston 41 percent. At the same time, over this entire period, Thunder Bay nevertheless still managed to have the largest municipal expenditure to GDP ratio of these cities.
What is more interesting is the evolution in functional composition. Figure 1 illustrates that in 2012, the City of Thunder Bay spent 5 percent of its budget on general government, 14 percent on protection of persons and property, 12 percent on transportation, 12 percent on the environment, 5 percent on health and emergency services, 13 percent on social and family services, 9 percent on cultural and recreation services, 2 percent on planning and development and 28 percent on "other". This last category reflects Thunder Bay’s ownership of its municipal telecom utility (TBayTel) as well as differences in the way Thunder Bay approaches social housing given we have a district board – the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board.
Figure 2 presents the 2022 composition. General government showed a decline to 4 percent, protection to persons and property rose to 21 percent, transportation remained at 12 percent as did the environment. Meanwhile, health and emergency services grew to 7 percent, social and family services declined to 7 percent, and both recreation and culture and planning and development remained the same at 9 percent and 2 percent respectively. Meanwhile, the "other" category's share declined to 26 percent.
Of course, for the composition to change, it means that these categories have grown at different rates and so Figure 3 presents the percent change in total spending by category over the 2012 to 2022 period. In accord with general local perceptions, the largest increases in spending have indeed been in protection services and health and emergency services at 76 and 73 percent respectively. Next is recreation and culture at 25 percent, followed by the environment at 14 percent, planning and development at 13 percent, "other" at 12 percent and transportation at 11 percent. There were two categories that saw declines in total spending: general government fell by 6 percent (there have indeed been some administrative economies) while social and family services fell by 32 percent.
Given that social issues have been front and center in Thunder Bay over the last few years, this allocation does provide some insight into how Thunder Bay is dealing with some of its social issues. Resource allocation appears to have targeted the more direct outcomes and fallout of the assorted social ills afflicting the streets of Thunder Bay. This is to be expected. What is somewhat more disturbing is that there has been an expenditure drop in family and social services which one might expect would be a longer-term spending approach to addressing some of the causes of social issues. Whereas, in 2012, 64.4 million was being spent on family and social services, this has declined to 44 million by 2022.
It is interesting to note that of the five cities mentioned at the start of this post, between 2012 and 2022, Thunder Bay saw the largest percent increases in dollars spent on protection to persons and property as well as health and emergency services. With respect to spending on family and social services, only Barrie saw a decline while Greater-Sudbury, Windsor and Kingston all saw increases. Windsor, Barrie, Greater-Sudbury, and Kingston also all increases in social housing spending (though Greater-Sudbury's was quite small). However, in the case of Thunder Bay it is difficult to tell from these numbers if we are indeed spending more in social housing in the "other" category. Ultimately, such differences across urban centers will provide an interesting laboratory experiment on how municipalities are dealing with issues like poverty, addiction and crime.