The 2021 Thunder Bay City budget should finally be ratified this week and getting there has been an interesting process on a number of fronts. First, is the sudden epiphany that struck city administrators by the fall that business as usual tax levy increases in the 3-4 percent range were not going to work this year given the push back from both business and residential ratepayers. Second is the rather assertive tone of debate adopted by some councilors in response to presentations and discussion during the budget process.
With respect to the actual budget, the initial 2021 budget request came in with a proposed tax levy increase of just over 2 percent. However, rather than go up from there, which has often been the case in past budget seasons, councilors have managed to whittle it down slightly to 1.83 percent. Ratepayers in Thunder Bay however should not relax and assume this is a new era whereby the City of Thunder Bay has finally realized its limitations and will begin a new transformative vision of more sustainable municipal government. Rather, one suspects the long game of the part of Administration is still that this is a short-term one-off event and next year with the pandemic subsiding, it will be time for larger tax increases to recover lost ground. This will be a mistake given that Thunder Bay needs to engage in a major exercise to bring its costs especially for government administrative services and protection more in line with other jurisdictions.
As for the tone of debate, well here we were treated to the spectacle of one councilor effectively interrupting a presentation to vigorously challenge debate the presenter’s facts and opinions rather than ask questions in a manner more akin to a court proceeding rather than a council meeting. In response to the presenter’s call for a review of police service spending which has accounted for half the tax levy increase since 2018, the councilor in question countered with the immense workload of the Thunder Bay police service in that it had responded to 5,000 incidents which “in his mind” equaled the amount that Toronto officers attended.
This in itself was an interesting empirical point given the data for 2019 comparing total criminal code violations excluding traffic reported in Toronto and Thunder Bay provided below in Figure 1. Needless to say, the total volume of incidents in Toronto vastly exceeds Thunder Bay. However, perhaps the councilor in question was being more nuanced and meant incidents per 100,000 population in which case Thunder Bay comes in at 7,046 and Toronto at 3,471 – at double the rate. In either case, where the number 5,000 came from and what it really means is probably best answered by the councilor.
However, if the councilor was trying to make
a case supporting the police service, he was certainly not doing them any
favors in his presentation of the data and facts. If one can be permitted yet another colorful marine metaphor, In launching argumentative torpedoes at presenters, the inability of councilors to effectively target and launch runs the risk of sinking their own ship. While one may think they are conducting an in-depth analysis while floundering under the water, it is probably wiser to begin from well above the surface and first survey the potential hazards.
More serious however was the debating of the presenter rather than simply asking questions and what in essence amounted to a form of bullying and badgering the presenter. Needless to say, this did not go unnoticed by several other councilors and to their credit they did attempt to rein the offending councilor in. Needless to say, the presenters provide input and answer questions to provide clarification and it is the councilors who are then supposed to debate the evidence amongst themselves rather than engage in self-congratulatory speeches and grandstanding.
This is not just a Thunder Bay phenomenon at the municipal level. City councilors and administration in Hamilton, Ontario for example are developing a reputation for being rather pugnacious towards their ratepayers and have been called out for hostile attitudes towards residents appearing before council. In Hamilton, there is a proposal supported by legal advice from their lawyers and administration to ban public letters critical of city council behavior from the public record of their meetings. This has prompted concerns that councilors in Hamilton may be trying to shield themselves from criticism.
Of course, in Thunder Bay, the response to criticism or questions on some matters - such as the leaky pipe sodium hydroxide fiasco – is simply to hide behind their lawyers and not answer questions. It would appear that in both Hamilton and Thunder Bay, lawyers appear to be hard at work in making sure there is less democracy. Coming on the heels of pandemic lock downs and social distancing that reduce personal and direct access to your representatives, it would appear we have entered a new era of government dictates from on high. And one gets the impression that many politicians do not seem to mind.
