Mayors and City Performance: Thunder Bay, 2000 to 2025

  

As we head towards the October 26^th municipal election, a retrospective on what has come to pass is always of benefit.  The next mayor and council will take Thunder Bay into the next quarter of the 21^st century so it is instructive to review some of what has transpired during the first quarter.  Mayors and councils have little control over the ebbs and flows of the provincial, national and global business cycles and their immediate impact on the city.  They also have not as much control as you might think over municipal policy given their part-time approach to the job, an established municipal bureaucracy, and provincial regulations and oversight. 

The key role of elected municipal officials is to provide assent and legitimization for decisions as well as democratic accountability to the electorate for taxes and expenditures that to a large extent are driven by rules and processes outside their immediate control.  They are in essence the shield that deflects attention away from the municipal and provincial bureaucrats who in effect actually govern municipalities.  While it is true that particularly persistent, driven and well-informed mayors and councillors can make a difference, for the most part, it is an exhausting process given they are caught between a demanding public and a faceless monolithic set of bureaucratic overlords.

Nevertheless, the mayor and council are the face of public accountability in our system of municipal governance and so their elected terms can be the basis for comparisons.  The following figures compare the period of mayors (and by extension their councils) of Thunder Bay from 2000 to 2025.  The comparators are three annual municipal indicators and two annual economic indicators.  The three municipal indicators are taken from data provided by the annual provincial Financial Information Returns (FIR) filed by each municipality.  These are: total own-purpose taxation revenue (which includes both residential and commercial tax revenues), per household total own-purpose taxation revenue and the size of the municipal workforce.  The two economic indicators are the total value of building permits issued (from FIR) and total employment (Statistics Canada). 

Where necessary, some data from the City of Thunder Bay budgets was also used.  It should be noted that the data for the start and end years is sometimes incomplete and in those cases estimated using a simple regression over the 2000 to 2024 period to obtain the 1999 and 2025 figures.  As well, these indicators focus on fiscal and economic indicators. Left out are social measures such as crime rates or rates of homelessness. Suffice it to say that over the entire 2000 to 2025 period, crime rates in Thunder Bay declined from 2000 to about 2015 but have since seen an uptick.  As for homelessness, that has definitely gotten worse over time and particularly since the pandemic.  Both of these trends in Thunder Bay are reflective of what has transpired in other Ontario cities.

Over the 2000 to 2025 period, there are five mayoral terms.  Ken Boshcoff (2000 to 2003 though the term starts in 1999), Lynn Peterson (2003 to 2010), Keith Hobbs (2010 to 2018), Bill Mauro (2018 to 2022) and Ken Boshcoff (2022 to 2025 though the term ends in 2026). Boshcoff essentially bookends the entire period and his two terms do offer an interesting comparison both for the two periods he served as well as relative to the others. The eras these mayors served in all posed challenges for the mayor and council of the day and not all of them were politically self-induced. 

Lynn Peterson, for example, faced the most serious economic challenges of these mayors serving during the forest sector crisis at the start of her term that essentially eliminated 5,000 jobs in Thunder Bay and then ending her service with the financial crisis of 2008-09.  Bill Mauro got to experience the economic and social disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Keith Hobbs, whose tenure was marked by a number of interesting high-profile issues, served during an economic period that saw some changes in Thunder Bay’s economy including the development of its knowledge based and resource sectors that served as a transition to the present period of growth.  As for Ken Boshcoff, he was truly blessed by serving in the final autumn years of the Thunder Bay forest sector pre 2003 as well as holding office after the worst of the pandemic and during the recent growth upsurge in mining and construction. Timing is often everything.

Figures 1 to 3 summarize the aforementioned indicators for each of these mayoral terms. Figure 1 provides the average annual growth rates by term for total own purpose taxation revenue, per household total own purpose taxation revenue and the municipal workforce (a head count of full, part time and seasonal workers).  The growth of taxation revenue (a function of both he rates applied as well as economic growth as reflected by growth in assessments) was highest for Boshcoff from 2022 to 2025 and Lynn Peterson 2003 to 2010).  Peterson’s term saw challenging economic conditions but in the pursuit of maintaining city services also saw some of the higher tax levy increases over the entire 2000 to 2025 period.  Tax revenue growth was also lowest under Boshcoff during the 2000 to 2003 period. Hobbs (2010 to 2018) saw the second lowest average growth in total taxation revenue.

 

Figure 1 also takes total tax revenue and divides by the number of households in the city to provide an estimate of the average tax burden per household, but it should be noted that this includes both residential and commercial revenue.  However, during the first quarter of the 21^st century, residential came to account for over 70 percent of tax revenues as the burden were shifted more on to residential as a result of provincial rebalancing. These results parallel the previous ones with Boshcoff (Term 2) and Peterson seeing the highest growth while Boshcoff (Term 1) and Hobbs see the lowest growth.  Finally, when it comes to municipal employment growth (workers employed by the City of Thunder Bay), growth was both highest and lowest for Boshcoff.  Indeed, as a result of early in the term post pandemic downsizing, Boshcoff (2022 to 2025) actually sees a slight shrinking of the municipal workforce average growth rates.

 

Figures 2 and 3 provide comparisons of the two economic indicators.  In terms of construction growth, the highest average annual growth rates in total building permit values were both for Boshcoff given his first term in office spanned the permit issued for the new hospital and his second for the rovincial jail project.  All of the others saw much more modest growth rates with the lowest rates under the term of Lynn Peterson. As for employment growth, not surprisingly, it was also highest in both of the Boshcoff terms and lowest – indeed negative – during the Peterson term with more modest growth during the Hobbesian and Mauronian terms.

 

Much of what transpired during the terms of these mayors and their respective councils was driven by external factors and as one might remark when it comes to Euchre or Poker, you must play the hand you are dealt.  One can be dealt a poor hand and manage to eke out a respectable performance.  On the other hand, one can be dealt a good hand and still handle it badly though when times are favourable it takes an awful lot of bad decision making to make a pig’s breakfast of it all. 

With the exception of Mauro, all of the mayors had a considerable period of time in which to make their mark.  Mauro was limited both by the length of his term as well as the onset of the pandemic.  Peterson was dealt a particularly poor hand in terms of economic circumstances that saw declining total employment in the city and forced higher than usual tax rate increases to maintain services.  At the same time, the period still managed to see some growth in building permit values.  The Hobbesian era despite the unfortunate moniker was neither particularly nasty, brutish or short at least in economic terms and saw a middling overall performance compared to the others.

The best performance at least in these charts over the long term appears to have been the quarter century bookend terms of Ken Boshcoff.  His two terms coincide with the highest growth rates of both building permit values as well as employment.  He managed to oversee both the largest percent expansion of municipal employment as well as the lowest, so he is able to satisfy both those who see municipal employment as a necessary economic driver as well as those who feel there needs to be restraint. His second term also coincides with the largest increases in own purpose municipal tax revenue but not necessarily the highest increases in tax levies.  One can either ascribe this relative success to the good fortune of timing or to the ability to play a good hand really well, or some linear combination thereof.  One leaves that ultimate assessment and any others they wish to make to the gentle reader.

Trade, Tariffs, Integration and Productivity

This post originally was featured on the Fraser Institute commentary page, September 30th, 2026.

Tariffs, trade, integration and productivity—the Canadian conundrum

As Canada continues in its trade dispute with the United States, its dalliance with the European Union, and its efforts to boost investment, the reality remains that the fundamental issue is not market access but Canada’s long-term productivity malaise as measured by the decline in the growth rate of real per-person GDP. Despite being an open economy with low effective tariff rates and access to and integration with the largest and wealthiest market in the world, Canada’s productivity performance waned in recent decades.

Moreover, Canadian real per-person GDP declined relative to the U.S. in the 21st century. Against the U.S. is how we have always tended to measure ourselves. While Harold Adams Innis maintained that Canada and its institutions are fundamentally a product of Europe, our geography has meant sharing a continent with the U.S. with whom we have both cooperated and competed economically even in the days before Confederation.

The immediate aftermath of Confederation saw Canada mired in stagnation as the Great Depression of the 1870s affected the world. Afterwards, a program of economic nation-building via Prairie settlement and railroad building linked the manufacturers of the east with the resource producers of the west under the protection of the National Policy tariff wall. This saw an investment boom and rapidly growing real per-person GDP (as illustrated below). It’s noteworthy that from 1880 to the eve of the First World War, our real per-person GDP growth exceeded that of the U.S.

The First World War and the Great Depression were periods of poor real per-person GDP growth punctuated by the boom of the 1920s, which again saw Canadian growth rates surpass American. The Second World War saw average annual real per-person GDP growth top 4 per cent and this was followed by the high growth rates of the 1950s and 1960s. Those of the 1950s were muted only by the fact that this was an era of rapid population growth. However, since the 1960s, our average annual real per-person GDP growth has declined steadily with the 2020s the most dismal period since the Great Depression and our real per-person GDP growth eclipsed by the U.S.

While advanced economies saw a slowdown in productivity growth in the wake of the 1970s oil price shock, the Canadian decline is particularly noteworthy in comparison with the U.S. The era of Prairies settlement and the wheat boom saw Canadian real per-person GDP growth outperform the Americans. The 1960s and 1970s also saw Canadian growth outperform the U.S. While both countries saw a productivity decline after the 1960s, since 2000 the Americans appear to have reversed theirs. Despite our economy and export sector being increasingly linked to the American market first via the 1988 free trade agreement and then NAFTA and rising exports, we have generally not performed well when it comes to per-person income growth.

The reasons for weak Canadian productivity performance both current and historical are numerous and extensive. There’s relatively weaker investment in productivity enhancing capital investment, which has worsened during the age of information and communications technology. There’s the generally smaller Canadian market fractured by interprovincial trade barriers, which has restricted economies of scale. Then there’s the combination of large governments, cumbersome regulation, as well as oligopolies in transport, telecoms, agriculture, airlines, banking and energy, which have reduced competition, innovation and adoption of new technology. There’s the effect of high personal and business taxes, which has had incentive effects on investment, work effort and resource allocation.

Then during the post-2000 housing asset boom, the emphasis on residential investment rather than plant, machinery and equipment was augmented by the fact that the construction sector had some of the lowest labour productivity of all Canadian sectors. And of course, one can always blame reliance on our natural resource sector intensity, which when times are good dampens the incentive to innovate and when times are bad bemoans the lack of resources to innovate.

It’s not that Canada has stopped growing, it’s that Canada is growing at a much slower rate than its nearest and most important competitor (the U.S.). Canada seems to have settled into a comfortable low growth equilibrium despite all the supposed advantages being conferred over the last 50 years by increased access to and integration with the U.S. market and economy. Falling effective tariff rates in the wake of the Second World War and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and access to the large American market should have increased competitive pressures fostering both more innovation, investment and cost-reducing economies of scale. Indeed, one might have expected convergence of Canadian and American productivity levels. Yet paradoxically, Canada’s productivity slide relative to the U.S. coincides with the increasing integration of the two economies.

Figure 2 plots Canadian to U.S. real per capita GDP as a percent share from 1870 to 2025 and accompanies it with a weighted scatterplot smooth to illustrate longer term trend. It combines this with the effective Canadian tariff rate over the same time as well as denotes the three key events in the 20th century integration of the Canadian and U.S. economies: The Auto Pact (1965), the Free Trade Agreement (1988) and NAFTA (1994). Note that our effective tariff rate prior to World War II was seldom below ten percent but declined steadily afterwards.

Canada’s real per-person GDP relative to the U.S. rose for the first century after Confederation. Canada’s real GDP closed the gap more rapidly from 1890 to the First World War and again from post-Second World War until the mid 1970s. However, somewhere between the signing of the Auto Pact and the first free trade agreement, Canada’s real GDP began to consistently grow more slowly than the U.S. From a height of nearly 90 per cent of U.S. real per-person GDP, it has now fallen to below 70 per cent.

There’s a rather large economic literature as to why increased integration and trade with a larger economy might paradoxically lead to divergence of per-person income and growth rates rather than convergence. Alwyn Young argued that under a free trade agreement between a large developed country with a higher stock of knowledge and a smaller less developed country, the less developed country would receive conventional gains from trade but the long-term dynamic implications were that the less developed country could experience falling technological progress and GDP growth compared to autarky. Of course, one might argue that Canada by mid-20th century was a highly developed economy, but then one might not guess that from the state of its national highway system compared to the U.S.

Devereux and Lapham maintained that in a world with two economies, under trade liberalization, the country with the higher stock of knowledge could increase its share of human capital in research and development while the other will systematically reduce its share with the end result being concentration of research and development (R&D) in the country with the initial advantage. While Canada has been able to innovate and conduct R&D, it has always borrowed technology and innovation from the U.S. and elsewhere, and under trade liberalization this practice may have worsened.

Of course, there are always counterpoints and Trefler finds that in the wake of the first free trade agreement, the Canadian industries that saw the largest tariff decreases did see industry-level labour productivity rise at comparable levels to those American industries receiving the largest tariff reductions. This of course raises the question as to why if productivity in affected Canadian industries did go up, it did not ultimately translate into higher rates of real per-person GDP growth. Where did the productivity gains go if not ultimately to raise our living standards?

The point of all this is as follows. Whether we renew a trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico or craft a new one with the EU or China or India or CANZUK or anyone else, Canada’s productivity performance must be addressed. If the last 50 years have taught us anything, it’s that a free trade agreement and continuing to simply export as we always have is not enough to ensure our future standard of living.

Without resolving our interprovincial trade barriers, boosting our research, development and innovation and translating it into outcomes, making our tax system more competitive and less stifling of work and investment effort, and addressing the cozy oligopolistic nature of our markets, all the market access and trade in the world will apparently not reverse our productivity decline. Neither will simply boosting our infrastructure investment to move more exports to the world market. By not addressing the fundamental structural and institutional problems facing Canada’s economy that hamper reaping the benefits of markets and trade, we will continue to be the economic frog in a slow boiling global pot of water.

Are We Over Reacting to July’s GDP Growth Rate?

  

Today’s release of July’s real GDP growth of close to zero by Statistics Canada has been interpreted as Canada’s economy stalling and a portent of ominous things to come as the trade dispute with the United States worsens.  However, it is only one month’s result and needs to be put in some comparative perspective.

Figure 1 plots monthly real GDP growth since January of 2024 and compared to the previous three months July does look like a precipitous drop. However, if one goes back for several years, there have been other very low growth months (March 2024, August 2024, June 2025, March 2026) not to mention several months of outright decline (November 2024, February 2025, April 2025, May 2025, October 2025, January 2026).  Indeed, over the entire 1997 to 2026 period, average monthly real GDP growth has only averaged 0.2 percent with the highest being June of 2020 at 5.8 percent and the lowest April 2020 at -10.4 percent – both during the initial phases of the pandemic.  

 

Figure 2 provides another comparison.  The real GDP growth rate for July of every year since 1997 is provided along with aggregate statistics for every July as well as for all the months the entire 1997 to 2026 period. At 0.02 percent, July 2026 is effectively zero but there was negative growth in the July of 1998 2001, 2007,2017 and 2023. Of these 30 Julys, July of 2026 is near the bottom, ranked at 24^th place. However, there have been six other July real GDP growth rates lower than July of 2026.  

 

In other words, there is no point in overreacting to one month’s poor result after three months of consecutive growth.  As Statistics Canada itself notes: “The goods-producing industries grouping was essentially unchanged in July as increases in construction and utilities were offset by declines in the other sectors comprising the aggregate. The services-producing industries aggregate was essentially flat, as increases across several sectors were offset by declines in retail trade and wholesale trade. Overall, 10 of 20 industrial sectors expanded in July.”

In general, summer in Canada is short and maybe more people than usual took time off and production slowed. Moreover, July of 2026 also saw wildfires peak in several parts of the country and this may also have been a factor especially when it comes to the service sector as more people remained indoors.

The Weakening of Canadian Per Capita GDP Growth

Lost in all the angst of our current trade dispute with the United States and the push to diversify Canada's export partners is the fact that despite what were very favourable market access terms via free trade arrangement with the United States and the subsequent growth in our exports, our real per capita GDP performance has been moribund.  Our only saving grace has been that we entered the period of decline in per capita GDP growth rates marking the last fifty years from an exceedingly high base.  Figure 1 plots IMF-WEO data on per capita GDP in constant prices ($2021) for Canada and a select number of important important countries and trade partners.  As hard as it might be to believe, in 1980, once adjusted for purchasing power parity, real per capita GDP in Canada was higher than the United States and the E.U.  

 

If one then moves forward, what is remarkable  is our performance against these - albeit cherry picked - comparison countries. Most of them are either  important trade partners for Canada or have the potential to become more important (especially in the case of the E.U. and the UK) in the wake of the current trade dispute with the United States. Our real per capita GDP is still high by world standards in that we are well above China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, not to mention New Zealand and Japan. However, the U.K. and the E.U. have nearly caught up with us.  Australia and the United States surpassed us some time ago.  Our real per capita GDP has grown but just about everyone else has grown faster.

Figure 2 presents the ranked implied annual growth rate of the real per capita GDP numbers in Figure 1 and also includes those for the World economy as a whole.  China and South Korea are the prime examples of the Asian miracle with annual growth rates since 1980 at 7.6 and 4.8 percent respectively.  This has allowed per capita income in China to double nearly every ten years which is an impressive performance even if they are still at an average per capita GDP that is half of Canada's.  South Korea started from a higher base than China but also has had a stellar performance with its per capita GDP doubling every 15 years since 1980 and at 98 percent of Canadian per capita GDP has essentially reached parity with us. 

 

The world has developed rapidly since 1980 with the world per capita GDP growth rate being a bit below South Korea's and that has been driven by two of its largest economies - China and India.  The United States and Australia and the U.K. in the end have seen their real per capita GDP expand by just under 2 percent annually while the E.U. and Japan are closer to 1.5 percent.  Canada clocks in at 1.1 percent in terms of its annual implied annual growth rate - below New Zealand at 1.3 percent but above Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

For all the talk about the E.U, as a sclerotic trade partner for Canada given its productivity issues,  it has grown faster than Canada and its per capita GDP is also for all intents and purposes on par with Canada.  These types of growth numbers should be a wake up call for Canada.  We have only done as well as we have because of inertia and that cannot last for ever.

 

The Trade War and Employment: So Far So Good

  

The current trade war between Canada and the United States has been now underway since March of 2025 with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs by the United States on Canadian steel and aluminum which then saw our own retaliatory tariffs.  Since then, there has been back and forth tariffing culminating in the latest onset of 50 percent U.S. tariffs on a range of Canadian goods (including toilet paper of all things) followed by our September 8^th retaliation of 15, 25 and 50 percents counter tariffs on a range of U.S. products.  Since then, the Americans signalled that there are some products they need from Canada more than they are willing to admit (like toilet paper) and has removed tariffs on them – road salt, cement and bottoms up everyone – toilet paper.

What the impact of the tariffs and trade disruptions have been on the Canadian economy is an important consideration and to date the Canadian economy appears to have been relatively resilient based on the latest GDP growth numbers as well as the employment numbers.  In term of GDP growth, there was second quarter growth of almost 1 percent in the most recent release led in part by higher exports of all things.   There seems to be some diversification of our exports underway given that trade volumes with the U.S. are flat. 

As for employment, August 2026 did see a monthly drop in employment relative to July of 42,000 jobs but what is important is not month to month but more annualized numbers.  Over the August 2025 to August 2026 period, employment in Canada has grown, notwithstanding the trade war.  However, the composition of that employment change is interesting.  Moreover, Ontario has fared better than one might have expected given its manufacturing exposure via the automobile sector.

The accompanying figure plots the percent change in employment for Canada, Ontario and Canada minus Ontario over the August 2025 to August 2026 period.  At the left of the figure, employment growth is provided for total employment, goods sector employment and then service sector employment.  After that, employment growth is also provided by class of worker and industry (Statistics Canada Table 14100376). To start, total employment (not seasonally adjusted) over the course of twelve months has grown by one percent in Canada – almost 213,000 jobs. Of these, 23,500 were in the goods sector while 189,400 were in the services sector. Ontario added 119,100 of these jobs with 4,700 in the goods sector and 114,400 in the services sector.  The trade dispute with the Americans has certainly slowed the growth of goods sector employment but not so much the service sector. If one looks at Canada minus Ontario, total employment grew by 93,800 jobs with goods accounting for 18,800 and services 75,000 jobs.

 

 

 

When broken down in more detail, the results are also quite interesting. The agricultural sector is not doing as well with employment shrinking by 5 percent in Ontario and 2 percent in the rest of the country.  Natural resources (fishing, hunting, mining, quarrying, oil and gas) is down nationally overall but grew by 12 percent in Ontario or 5300 jobs while it shrank by 7100 jobs in the rest of the country.  It seems Ontario’s northern mining sector is finally getting some traction. Employment in utilities is down pretty much everywhere while construction employment is down in Ontario but up in the rest of the country. 

Paradoxically, over this twelve month period, manufacturing employment is up in Canada by 1.5 percent nationally (28,500 jobs), 1.8 percent in Ontario (15,200 jobs) and 1.3 percent in the rest of the country (13,300 jobs) outside Ontario. Transport and warehousing employment is up everywhere but wholesale and retail trade are down.  The finance, insurance and real estate sector is up in Ontario but down in the rest of the country. Then there is public administration which is down everywhere and likely reflects federal government downsizing of employment which one certainly cannot blame on tariffs.  As well, education sector employment is down in Ontario but up slightly in the rest of the country while the health and social assistance sectors as well as the information culture and recreation sectors appear to have gained a lot of jobs in percent terms.

So, what is one to make of this? While despite the language of there being a “Trade War” in progress, it needs to be realized that most goods being exported and imported between Canada and the United States are not subject to tariffs and business is continuing as usual.  Jobs losses are not concentrated where might one expect them to be with the losses in agriculture, education, public administration and utilities not easily attributable to tariffs.  The effect on manufacturing has been muted though perhaps there has been some effect on wholesale and retail trade but certainly not transport and warehousing.

In short, things seem to be going better than expected for now.  Despite the rhetoric, the trade war seems to be in its phony war phase.

Ontario’s August Employment Numbers: Yours to Discover

  

In the wake of Canada’s employment surge in July, August appears to have brought everyone back down to earth.  According to the August 2026 Labour Force Survey, Statistics Canada reported that employment declined by 42,000 (-0.2%) in August though the national unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.4%.  Employment fell in business, building and other support services, public administration, natural resources and utilities though it increased 1.2 percent in in manufacturing adding 22,000 jobs. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that one should not agonize over month to month numbers given they do not indicate a trend and are frequently revised.

While Ontario lost jobs according to the raw numbers once the numbers are seasonally adjusted, Ontario saw a small increase of 5700 jobs which essentially means that employment growth in Ontario was lacklustre in August.  If one examines the seasonally adjusted numbers for Ontario and its major urban areas in August (Figure 1), Windsor, Toronto and Guelph added 6100, 5900 and 2600 jobs respectively.  It’s pretty much downhill from there in terms of the absolute number of jobs added with Thunder Bay, Oshawa, London, Hamilton and Ottawa seeing job losses.  Indeed, Hamilton and Ottawa were the hardest hit with Hamilton seeing 5100 jobs lost and Ottawa – still seeing cuts in public sector workers – fell by 9200 jobs.

 

 

If one looks at the growth rates in annual terms (August 2025 to August 2026; See Figure 2), seasonally adjusted monthly employment is still up substantially with Ontario seeing 96,500 jobs added since August 2025 for an increase of 1.2 percent in employment.  Guelph and Bellville-Quinte lead the annualized employment growth rates at 13.5, and 9.9 percent respectively followed by Windsor at 6.1 percent and Greater Sudbury, at 5 percent. Again, several cities saw negative employment growth with Thunder Bay and Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge at -0.3 percent, Hamilton at -1.4 percent and London at -4.5 percent.

 

 

The impact of tariffs and the trade war to date over the course of the year are not yet having a major impact in Ontario though the performance across some cities is a bit more mixed.  Hamilton, London and Ottawa appear to be having the most turmoil in their employment. The monthly August numbers in the wake of the July surge cannot really be taken as indicative of any trend though the annualized numbers suggest Ontario is holding its own.  As for the two northern Ontario CMAs, Figure 3 plots their longer-term employment evolution in more detail.

 

 

Both Thunder Bay and Greater Sudbury have seen increasing employment since 2021 based on both the profile of monthly numbers as well as the fitted trend.  Since August of 2021, Greater Sudbury has added over 18,000 jobs while Thunder Bay has added 4700.  In percent terms, employment in Greater Sudbury has grown by 22 percent while Thunder Bay has grown by 8 percent.  However, Thunder Bay, based on these monthly seasonally adjusted numbers peaked in January of 2026 at an employment level of 70,400 jobs meaning that over the last eight months, it has shed 3800 jobs.  This suggests that there has been a substantial slowdown in employment in Thunder Bay and may be tied to the winding up of major construction projects at places like the airport, assorted hotels and of course the new correctional facility as well as some reductions in public sector employment.

A return to the mid 60000s in total employment suggests that Thunder Bay will not be permanently staying above the 70000-job employment ceiling at least for now.

120,000 Could Be the Tip of The Iceberg

  

A CBC story this morning stated that “applications from people around the world seeking Canadian citizenship certificates have been rising rapidly in recent months, fuelled by thousands of applications from the United States.”  Under Bill C-3, those who can prove they were descended from a Canadian ancestor even if that ancestor left several generations ago can now apply for citizenship.  Apparently, half of the applications are from the United States and the number of applications in general has soared to the point where there are now about 120,000 applications for citizenship waiting to be adjudicated and processed.

This is potentially just a drop in the bucket given that since the mid 19th century, literally several million Canadians emigrated to the United States.  The period from 1867 to 1896 prior to the opening of the Canadian west, was a period of relatively anemic economic growth in Canada and many residents of Canada crossed the border into the opportunities offered by the larger US economy.

Indeed, by the 1910 US Census, Canadians were one of the largest categories of foreigners in the United States. As estimated by G.E. Jackson in a 1923 article in the American Academy of Political and Social Science, between 1850 and 1920, 1,890,000 Canadian born citizens moved to the United States.  Figure 1 provides a chart of the numbers on Canadian net emigration to the United States provided by Jackson in his article. Note the decline after 1900 as the Canadian wheat boom era and prairie settlement and the industrialization of central Canada offered more opportunities and slowed the outflow.

 

In 1910, there were 1,204,637 Canadian born residents living in the United States.  One imagines that their descendants easily number ten-fold today.  If there are 10 to 12 million Americans of Canadian ancestry, then potentially, there could be many more applications to come regarding the recovery of lost Canadian citizenship.

Of course, it is unlikely that there will be ten million applications for lost citizenship from the United States, but the ultimate numbers could be more substantial than one might think.  In any event, this story certainly helps highlight what for many Canadians is a forgotten aspect of our past.

The Real Issue in Thunder Bay’s Municipal Election

  

With the fall municipal election looming and the slate of ward candidates being somewhat thin ahead of the August 21^st filing deadline, Thunder Bay’s municipal race is not as contested as the 2022 election – at least aside from the mayor’s chair.  That year saw six candidates vie for the mayor’s position and 54 candidates for assorted councillor positions. At present, there are seven candidates for mayor but only seventeen running for council positions with several wards having only one candidate.  There is of course still over a week to go, and one can expect more candidates to file.

There are any number of reasons why there may currently be a dearth of candidates.  One reason may simply be to keep your powder dry.  After all, once you have filed you are campaigning and become a target for others and it is useful, especially if you are established, to minimize the amount of time you have to campaign.  On the other hand, there have been a significant number of current council members who have stated they are not running again and that may indicate the positions have become less attractive for reasons ranging from compensation to social media attacks.  After all, when a ward incumbent leaves the position, one might expect it would attract more entry.

Then, there is the possibility that being a councillor does not really seem to provide much influence over municipal issues given that issues have become increasingly complex and much is being dictated by the province.  Moreover, the role of council increasingly seems to be one of simply selecting from options provided by administration transforming the role more into that of an advisory board to the city manager.   It is not that councillors cannot rear up and change things but the complexity and intractability of some of the current issues (crime, infrastructure, green space, housing affordability, homelessness) make the task particularly daunting given the abuse that comes with the process.

Of course, the real sleeper issue here is not even the current dearth of candidates but the composition of the mayor’s race.  There are seven candidates at present for the position but only one has previously held municipal office or any elected office for that matter.  Now that in of itself is not necessarily a problem.  After all, this is Canada and our current Prime Minister went into the top job without ever having held any elected office.  If a former central banker can become prime minister, then surely local businesspeople and professionals can become mayor without having previously been a mayor or councillor.

The real issue with respect to the mayor’s position is the following.  Ontario now provides for strong mayor powers that ostensibly are tied to provincial priorities such as housing, transit and infrastructure.  These powers if exercised include proposing the municipal budget (subject to a two-thirds veto by council), assuming the powers of the Chief Administrative Officer, hiring and dismissing of staff including the Chief Administrative Officer (but excluding certain positions such as the City Treasurer, police and fire chief, etc.…) and the vetoing of bylaws deemed to interfere with provincial priorities.  These can potentially be very substantial powers and to his credit, the outgoing mayor formally declared his intention not to use those powers with respect to budget issues though he did say he would consider using them regarding an issue with animal keeping bylaws.

However, there now a slate of mayoral candidates with a range of backgrounds and experiences and given what we know about them, how might they interpret and use these powers?  As we move into the fall and the election heats up, there are a number of important questions that need to be addressed and answered by anyone seeking the mayor’s chair.  Along with their “vision” for Thunder Bay, they need to explain whether or not they would seek to use strong mayor powers and what are the issues and circumstances that they believe would warrant the exercise of such powers. The presence of strong powers also requires their responsible use and we need all the information we can get on that.

 

A Trade Agreement or Economic Anschluss?

  

As the interminable trade negotiations between Canada and the United States continue, in the absence of inside information from being at the table, one is left with trying to figure out what is going on by relying on the snippets and reports that make their way into media stories.  One of the most recent accounts as to where we are at in the Globe and Mail paints a picture of Canada that runs contrary to the public “elbows up” domestic rhetoric.  Essentially, according to this report “Canada and the United States are negotiating a deal in which Ottawa would concede on a long list of Trump administration trade demands in exchange for some relief on sectoral tariffs, as talks intensify less than two weeks before another round of threatened American levies.” Indeed, the tendency towards concessions was noted in another less flattering Globe and Mail piece.

Essentially, Canada would remove its retaliatory tariffs, return U.S. alcohol to the shelves, agree to Washington’s views on dairy quotas and in return get lower tariffs on steel and aluminum, some relief on auto and forest product tariffs and avoid the August 19^th tariff increases.  However, there is going to be a baseline set of tariffs on all Canadian goods no matter what, which will be part of continuing negotiations into the fall and we are expected to make good on our purchase of F-35 fighter jets as well as make additional commitments to joint North American security which will inevitably involve more purchases of U.S. military goods. Any new United States-Mexico-Canada trade arrangement down the road will essentially be an assortment of separate managed deals as dictated by the United States united by a continued tariff albeit one that probably favours us relative to countries outside North America. 

In some respects, one would have to say that we should not be surprised if this is the outcome.  A country with 75 percent of its exports going to a single market does not have the leverage it might imagine unless it wants to play hardball on crucial exports like oil, gas, potash and electricity and the Prime Minister has already given up that card.  Ultimately not using it is one thing but stating in advance that it will not be used is something else. The Americans want tariffs because they see them as both a way to onshore production as well as a potentially lucrative source of revenue.  And whose exports are a better source of revenue than Canada and Mexico given the sheer volume of trade.  The Americans will certainly not want to reduce their “tax base” by exempting either us or Mexico. As for the fact that tariffs on our goods are paid for by American consumers – well, it is a de facto consumption tax on Americans and if Americans want to avoid it, they can consume American products.  From the Trumpian perspective it is a win-win situation despite the fact that the evidence to date suggests that this is not working as well as they would like.

Currently, what the Americans seem to be proposing is a world where they levy tariffs on us in terms of whatever goods they want and at whatever rate they choose while we continue to admit all their products tariff free as well as spend Canadian tax dollars on American military goods. After all of our elbows up rhetoric, this is the deal it would appear we are on the road to accepting.  The real question is can we come up with a better approach?  Obviously, the best approach is multilateral free trade given the shared economic and geographic space occupied by Canada, the US and Mexico but this is now not on the table.   

 I would have to venture once again that what Canada should pursue with the Americans is essentially a deal modelled in part on the 1854 Reciprocity Treaty.  Both sides would let in raw natural resource and raw agricultural imports duty free. This would satisfy our commitments as reliable providers of the goods the Americans seem to want from us.  It would also help keep food costs down for consumers on both sides.  However, all imports of non-raw-natural resource and raw agricultural imports – anything value added - could have tariffs levied on them by either side.  (For example, oil and natural gas duty free but gasoline and petroleum products could be tariffed. Milk duty free but butter and cheese can be tariffed) The rates can be jointly negotiated, or they can simply be left up to each side based on what they think their consumers can bear and what revenues each side thinks that they think they can get. It all sounds so very 19th century but these seem to be the times we are in.

Naturally, this is a not very good outcome but think back to the period between 1870 and 1930 when Canada had a much smaller domestic market and was behind a tariff wall.  There was still economic growth and while growth in an environment of free trade would have been greater, it was not an available option.  We now have a market of 40 million people and if we combine it with a set of tax reforms that lower corporate and personal income tax rates, that could help compensate for the higher costs imposed by tariffs on American imports. Add in further reductions of inter-provincial trade restrictions and we may actually achieve the internal common market that should have been brought into existence in 1867.

Freer trade with the United States was something that was achieved over several generations and when it worked it worked well for both sides. Again, it does not seem to be an available option.  Think of it another way.  If we simply accept an outcome whereby the Americans dictate all the terms and tariffs as well as well as continue to direct our military purchases towards their goods and then arbitrarily change the terms whenever they feel it is to their benefit, well in a sense you have indeed become the 51^st state but without any of the benefits.  If the Carney government negotiates a trade deal in which we essentially grant the Americans everything they want and we obtain only what they deign to grant us, then we will have negotiated an economic capitulation and Anschluss and not a trade agreement.  The choice facing the Carney government is either a smaller and slower growing protectionist Canadian economy (which some might argue we have already partly achieved with the economic policies of the last decade) or Economic Anschluss with the Americans in which the Americans receive all the economic benefits of Canada as an American territory without any of the political costs.

 

Thunder Bay, Sudbury and Ontario: More Crime Trends

  

Well, with so much data available in the recent releases of crime data from statistics Canada, another crime post is definitely in order especially as a way to mark the end of the civic holiday long weekend.  This time, a focus on Thunder Bay and Greater Sudbury with respect to trends over time given they are northern Ontario’s two largest metropolitan centers, along with a comparison to Ontario as a whole to put things in perspective.  Figure 1a presents the 2025 rates for both all-criminal code incidents (excluding traffic violations) as well as the violent crime rate for Thunder Bay, Greater Sudbury, and Ontario.  As Figure 1a shows, Thunder Bay is definitely experiencing higher police reported crime rates than either Greater Sudbury or Ontario as a whole. 

 

In 2025, Thunder Bay’s crime rate was 8,374 crimes per 100,000 population compared to 4,706 per 100,000 for Greater Sudbury and 4,297 per 100,000 for Ontario.  Thunder Bay’s crime rate in 2025 was 95 percent greater than Ontario and 10 percent more tin the case of  Greater Sudbury.  In terms of violent crime, Thunder Bay’s rate was 2,249 per 100,000 compared to 1,177 for Greater Sudbury and 1,078 for Ontario. Violent crime in Thunder Bay in 2025 was109 percent greater than the Ontario rate whereas Greater Sudbury was 9 percent more. 

As well, Figure 1b shows the homicide rate in Thunder Bay for 2025 was 6.1 per 100,000 while in Sudbury it was 4.1 per 100,000 and only 1.3 per 100,000 in Ontario as a whole.  Needless to say, crime rates in Thunder Bay and Sudbury are above the rates for Ontario as a whole but Thunder Bay in general is double the Ontario rate while Sudbury is only about 10 percent more.  However, in terms of homicides, both cities were well above the Ontario rate in 2025 with Thunder Bay 369 percent greater than Ontario as a whole and Sudbury 215 percent greater.

Figure 2 presents a dual scale chart for Ontario with total crimes and violent crimes per 100,000 on the left vertical axis and the homicide rate per 100,000 on the right.  Observations for the three series are plotted from 1998 to 2025 with a linear trend fitted to each series.  If one looks at the three raw series, crime rates including violent crimes and homicides generally declined from 1998 to about 2014 and then started to rise.  Over that period, the crime rate in Ontario went from 7,019 per 100,000 to 3,549 per 100,000 while the violent crime rate declined from 1,222 to 789.  Homicides also fell from 1.4 to 1.2 per 100,000. However, since then, all have increased with the crime rate in 2025 reaching 4,297 per 100,000, violent crime reaching 1,078 and the homicide rate up to 1.3 per 100,000.  In terms of an overall trend, violent crime and total crime rates over the 1998 to 2025 period still trend downwards but the homicide rate in Ontario now shows a rising long-term trend.

 

Figures 3 and 4 present parallel charts for Thunder Bay and Greater Sudbury.  Both cities follow patterns similar to the rest of the province in that overall crime and violent crime rates decline from 1998 to 2014 and then start to rise with the overall linear trend being downward for the overall 1998 to 2025 period.  Both also show noticeable rising homicide rates over the long term and declining overall crime rates when a linear trend is fitted to the 1998 to 2025 data. In the case of violent crime over the 1998 to 2025 period, Thunder Bay shows a declining violent crime rate when the linear trend is fitted while Greater Sudbury shows a gently rising violent crime rate trend.

 

 

Nevertheless, crime is a matter of both level and trend when making comparisons so Figures 5 and 6 focus on the two most serious categories –violent crimes and homicides – to compare Thunder Bay, Greater Sudbury, and Ontario more directly.  Figure 5 presents the violent crime rates and shows that Thunder Bay and Ontario do indeed trend down while Greater Sudbury trends up over the 1998 to 2025 period.  However, when one looks at the gap between Thunder Bay, Sudbury and Ontario, based on the trends, it will be the end of the 21st century when Thunder Bay matches Sudbury’s violent crime rate while it looks like it will always be double the Ontario rate. 

 

 

Things look somewhat worse when it comes to the homicide rate (see figure 6).  Both Thunder Bay and Greater Sudbury have seen a major spike in their homicide rates since 2020 which has pulled their trend lines upwards.  However, Thunder Bay is definitely in a class of its own with a level of homicides as well as an upward trajectory that makes the homicide rates in Greater Sudbury and Ontario look modest by comparison.  However, it was not always so. Up until 2008, while homicide rates in both Greater Sudbury and Thunder Bay fluctuated around the Ontario numbers, they tended to parallel each other. Indeed, for the 1998 to 2008 period, the average annual homicide rate (per 100,000 population) in Thunder Bay was 1.4, Greater Sudbury 1.4, and for Ontario it was 1.5.  For the 2015 to 2025 period, the average homicide rate in Thunder Bay was 6.1 while for Greater Sudbury it was 2.2 and for Ontario 1.6.

Taken over the long run, Thunder Bay has always had generally higher crime rates than Ontario as a whole and the gap has been fairly consistent.  However, its reputation as Ontario’s “murder city” is a relatively recent phenomenon. Thunder Bay’s average homicide rates were not out of line with the rest of the province prior to 2008 and it has only been since then that homicide rates in Thunder Bay have soared. It is indeed an interesting question as to what factors are responsible for the increase since 2008.  What is it about the post 2008 period that makes that year in Thunder Bay such a break with the past when it comes to homicides? Sudbury has seen a similar type of spike in homicide rates since 2015 though it remains to be seen if that new upward trend will continue.  Given that this is a municipal election year in Ontario, these numbers should be an interesting focus for debate.

Crime, Ontario and Thunder Bay

  

Statistics Canada released the police reported crime statistics for Canada in 2025 last week and the overall trends were a decline in both the conventional Crime Rate (CR) as well as the Crime Severity Index (CSI).  According to Statistics Canada, in 2025 the national CSI dropped by 5 percent while the CR declined by 2 percent.  In other words, both the number of crimes per 100,000 population (excluding traffic violations) fell as well as the seriousness of those crimes. Relative to their historic peak in the early 1990s, crime rates are still down dramatically though they are up from 2015 which marks the start of a reversal of the long-term downward trend. However, since 2023, both crime severity and crime rates appear to have declined.

Ontario reflects the national trends with crime severity in 2025 down 6 percent from the year previous (though still up 12 percent from 2015) and the crime rate down 4 percent from the previous year but up 20 percent from 2015.  The Ontario numbers vary when its major CMAs are examined with quite a few CMAs up while others are down.  However, the largest cities – Toronto and Ottawa – are both down and they of course affect the provincial totals dramatically given together they account for well over half of Ontario’s population.  As for northern Ontario CMAs – Greater Sudbury in 2025 saw a 2 percent decline in its CSI but a 3 percent increase in its crime rate while Thunder Bay saw a 3 percent increase in its CSI and an 18 percent rise in its crime rate – the largest increases across Canada’s 41 CMAs. However, Thunder Bay did not have the highest total crime rate in the country as that dubious distinction went to Chilliwack, B.C. (at 11,455 crimes per 100,000) while Thunder Bay was a bit further down the list in 6th place (after Kamloops, Red Deer, Nanaimo and Kelowna) at 8,373 crimes per 100,000.

Comparing Thunder Bay to the other major Ontario CMAs is done in Figure 1 and Thunder Bay definitely stands out when compared to other Ontario cities.  Thunder Bay is first at 8,374 crimes per 100,000 with Peterborough second at 5,386.  At the bottom are Toronto and Barrie at 3,950 and 3,777 respectively.  In terms of growth (Figure 2), about half of Ontario CMAs saw their crime rates decline and the other half saw an increase.  Thunder Bay is not only growing in terms of population, housing, construction and retail but also unfortunately with respect to crime.  Thunder Bay saw the largest increase at 18 percent followed by Brantford at 10 percent and then London at 7 percent.  Toronto and Windsor saw the largest declines at 5 percent and 10 percent respectively. 

 

 

A logical question is what policing resources are available to these Ontario cities to fight crime and Figure 3 presents police officers per 100,000 using data from Statistics Canada (TABLE 35100077).  Here it should be noted that the crime figures correspond to CMAs, whereas the police statistics are for municipal police services whose boundaries may not exactly correspond with the CMA boundaries. Nevertheless, the rankings proceed and here Thunder Bay is again at the top of the rankings of these Ontario municipal forces with 197 police officers per 100,000 in 2025. Next highest is Windsor at 172 followed by Toronto at 171.  At the bottom of the rankings are London, Ottawa and Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge (Waterloo Region Police) at 143, 135 and 118 officers per 100,000 respectively. Thunder Bay has the highest crime rate across major Ontario cities and it has the highest policing resources per capita.

 

However, Figure 4 looks at the policing resources in a somewhat different way.  It looks at the growth in police officers per 100,000 and does so between 2023 and 2025 (because Statistics Canada’s annual data does not have an entry for 2024). Here the numbers show that while the majority of Ontario municipal police forces saw growth in police officers per 100,000 – about one third did not.  Those showing a decline are Sudbury, Windsor, Kingston, Thunder Bay and Brantford. Of these five cities showing a decline in policing resources per capita, four also saw an increase in crime rates in 2025 with the exception being Windsor.

 

So, is there a relationship between policing resources and crime?  Simple correlations between police numbers and crime rates are probably not the best way to evaluate this type of relationship and a regression approach where confounding factors like demographics, community income and land area are considered are better.  Some might argue that wealthier communities with better socio-economic conditions can both afford more police as well as have the determinants for lower crime rates.  Some might argue that more police simply means more crime gets reported and could paradoxically result in a positive relationship between crime rates and policing. Nevertheless, it can be done simply and Figures 5 and 6 are presented together because they show an interesting feature of the data when you plot the crime rate against the number of police officers.  

 

Figure 5 plots the crime rate per 100,000 for all the Ontario CMAs against the number the number of police officers per 100,000 and the correlation is positive when a linear trend is fitted. However, that trend is heavily influenced by one observation in the northeast corner of the chart which "pulls" the line upward.  That is Thunder Bay.  If you remove Thunder Bay and redraw the chart with linear trend (Figure 6) you get the more conventional result that more police officers per capita are correlated with lower crime rates.  Thunder Bay is what one can refer to as an “outlier”.  It is not like the others.

Of course, it might be that using levels is not the way to do such a comparison and what might be better is to plot the recent growth in the crime rate against the recent growth in police officers per 100,000.  This is done in Figure 7 and the result is (including Thunder Bay) more conventional and in line with the expectation that if the number of police officers per 100,000 population is growing, the crime rate should see lower growth rates or even declines. Thunder Bay in this chart is in the northwest quadrant with a decline in per capita police resources in 2025 and an increase in crime rates.

 

Still, Thunder Bay even if its recent policing resources per capita have declined, nevertheless has the most police officers per capita of the Ontario cities in this comparison.  Does this mean there is an efficiency or effectiveness problem? Again, one way to look at this is to take the statistics and compute the reported crimes per police officer.  Figure 8 does this and the ranking shows that Thunder Bay has the third highest reported crimes per police officer of these Ontario cities.  In other words, there are a lot of crimes being reported by the police.  If one wants to use crimes reported per police officer as a productivity or effectiveness measure, then the Thunder Bay Police Service is one of the most “productive or effective” in Ontario.  They are catching a lot of crime.

 

What does this mean for crime in Thunder Bay?  Why are crime rates in Thunder Bay so high despite having one of the largest police forces in per capita terms?  It is because Thunder Bay simply has a lot of crime and it is getting worse and overwhelming the resources available.  If one may hypothesize, Thunder Bay is indeed unique in some of the economic and social forces that have shaped its past and continue to shape its future.  It is located at the crossroads of the country which means it is a transport node not only for grain, potash and transport trucks but also for criminals and criminal activity. 

In terms of social elements, Thunder Bay is a community that has always had a frontier edge and that includes an element of independence that can often border on lawlessness.  While it is true that Canadian cities have all become a bit more lawless in the wake of the COVID pandemic, Thunder Bay seems further along the path when compared to even the GTA. Lawlessness progresses in degrees.  Not following parking bylaws for snow removal or walking your dog across other people’s lawns is the start and suggests a lack of concern for others and the public good.  Indulging in rolling stops at stop signs, speeding and then running a red light is the next step.   I have seen vehicles doing U-turns on the Thunder Bay expressway seemingly oblivious to other traffic.  Increased theft in stores is yet another progression and then there is the infiltration of Thunder Bay by increased numbers of drug dealers coming from Toronto due to it being both a captive and lucrative market in its own right as well as a gateway to northern reserves.  Then comes the litany of domestic abuse and household violence largely springing from drug and alcohol abuse which also consumes police resources.

The police in Thunder Bay are essentially being overwhelmed.  They are being asked to solve not only Thunder Bay’s crime and social problems – which are substantial in their own right - but to deal with a wider range of provincial and national crime trends due to Thunder Bay’s location as a transport crossroads. Do you want to see crime rates in Thunder Bay come down?  Additional resources from the O.P.P. and the R.C.M.P need to be deployed outside the city limits along the highways leading to the city as well as the airport, port and railyards.   Sniffer dogs going through luggage at the airport and a more visible police presence there is needed.  There should be a lot more “seat belt” checks and “speeding enforcements” on the 11/17 and Highway 61 corridors leading to the city as well as more transport truck “safety inspections.”

It is not just the resource available but how they are deployed and used.  Moreover, crime fighting requires cooperation across jurisdictions and better coordination of efforts between the assorted policing levels.  Thunder Bay’s crime rate can be reduced but given the national and regional spillovers of the problem both into and out of Thunder Bay, it is not just the responsibility of the Thunder Bay Police Service.  In some ways, Thunder Bay’s role as a transport choke point is both the source of its crime problems and can facilitate its potential solution. At least, that is what the numbers are telling me.