Pandemics are ultimately associated with great economic and
social change as once the pandemic subsides, there is never a full return
to the previous world. In Thunder Bay,
the changes wrought by the pandemic have emphasized and highlighted many of the
city’s problems. Along with continuing
high rates of crime, homelessness, racism, mental illness, and the growing
effects of a changing climate, the lineups at food banks have been increasing
and there even seems to be a return to a wild west frontier mentality with increasing numbers of people being stopped by police for driving under the
influence. Thunder Bay has always been a
city with a mean frontier edge to it whether it is on the city’s roads, its bars,
or its school parks and playgrounds.
The recent surge in COVID-19 cases particularly in lower
income homeless residents accentuates the reality that there are really two
Thunder Bays – a Thunder Bay of growing poverty as employment and health becomes more
precarious given job loss and city businesses hard hit by the pandemic and one of secure
largely broader public sector driven employment. The evidence of the social and economic changes
that have emerged over time are there for all to see - if they want to.
Figure 1 shows that the decline in homicide rates in Thunder
Bay that had been occurring in tandem with the rest of the country came to an
end circa 2007 – perhaps not entirely coincidentally at the tail end of the
massive economic shakeup of the regional forest sector crisis. They have since been rising and Thunder Bay
invariably emerges year after year as the murder capital of the country. Figure
2 shows that over the last decade, overall building permit values – which
signal new investment – have trended downwards and residential permit values
have been largely stagnant. Figure 3 shows that housing starts have essentially
been flat at low levels compared to the pre-1990 period. Figure 4 shows that over the last 20 years,
employment has trended downward with the pandemic providing the expected
additional downward spike at the end of the series.
Over the longer term of its economic history, as captured by
the evolving population size shown in Figure 5, Thunder Bay has essentially
been stationary since the 1970s.
That is
important because population still is an important economic indicator in that
population growth tends to respond to economic opportunity and Thunder Bay’s
lack of population growth is the one long-term indicator of the state of its economy.
Our city’s population peaks in the late 1970s and 1980s and has actually
trended slightly downward since.
One wonders about the coincidence between the end of growth in the 1970s and the onset of a monopoly municipal government in place of the formerly competitive municipalities of Fort William and Port Arthur.
It is true that the Thunder Bay CMA population is larger at
about 125,000 or more and has actually trended slightly upwards in recent years. However, it is the official population of the
City of Thunder Bay within its city boundaries and not the CMA population and
residents external to Thunder Bay city proper that matter because in the end it
is the tax base of the City of Thunder Bay that pays for services in the city
via the tax levy. Yet, what is quite
remarkable is that despite the lackluster growth in major indicators, there has
been substantial growth in the tax levy of the City of Thunder Bay and
associated municipal employment as Figures 6 and 7 demonstrate. While the rate of growth of the tax levy has
declined over the last five years, it has grown faster than both population and
inflation combined.
All this coincides with the growing disquiet many residents
feel with respect to the direction the City has been taking. Yet, in the face of mounting evidence of substantial issues there
seems to be an increasing sense of detachment from the public by the Mayor,
City Councillors and Administrators given recent decisions such as the pursuit
of expensive major capital projects like the proposed new Indoor Turf and police
facilities, the silence on the epidemic of home plumbing issues linked to City
water, and a pathological preoccupation with seemingly superficial issues like
tourism signs and sporting events. True, our city councillors are always quick
to articulate their concerns about the problems facing Thunder Bay and indeed
much of their meetings are taken up by pious words too numerous to count but in
the end, they are either unable or unwilling to systematically tackle the
future.
A key part of the problem is that our patterns of civic
decision making are rooted in a mid-twentieth century vision of where Thunder
Bay needs to go. My take on that vision
– which I articulated in an earlier post – bears repeating and can be
summarized as follows: Thunder Bay is
a regional center and strategically located full-service high-tech urban oasis
set in a pristine natural wonderland with a wonderful quality of life on
crucial east-west trade and transport routes whose full potential is
unrealized. Indeed, the entire City’s
potential is unrealized and what Thunder Bay needs is continual infrastructure
investment to attract people and effective communication of our potential to
convey the message of how wonderful we are.
While Thunder Bay may have social problems, they are not any worse than
other places and have been blown out of proportion by the national media. City
residents need to have a positive attitude, stay the course on this strategy,
and we need to invest in the public services and infrastructure to make it all
happen.
This is in essence what continues to drive civic policy in
Thunder Bay even though since amalgamation in 1970 the City has stayed static
in population, its industrial mainstays have largely disappeared, and its grain
transportation role shrunk to a shadow of its former glory. While there indeed has been some employment
diversification into a knowledge economy and the health and education sectors
that have helped provide a market and business opportunities for some
entrepreneurs, it remains that this has been largely a rear-guard maintenance
action that has barely kept pace with the employment losses. Moreover, much of this employment growth has
been in broader public sector employment making it increasingly tied to
political decision making in Toronto or Ottawa.
Our political clout is not as large as we like to think given the higher
population growth in southern Ontario.
Key to this local vision is the level of municipal spending,
employment and infrastructure investment partly geared towards keeping the
economy going via construction projects.
This spending is financed by government grants and by tax increases
levied increasingly on the residential tax base given the departure of the
industrial mainstays who provided the base for the past development of a very
generous level of municipal spending and programs. Tax increases are justified by “a build it
and they will come philosophy” but it has become apparent that after fifty
years we have built a lot and not too many have joined us. When the point on practically zero population
growth is mentioned, the response is that we have large numbers of temporary
residents whether they be students or visitors from outlying First Nations requiring
services. However, we do not seem to
have accurate numbers documenting this aside from the ones City Councillors and
Administrators like to throw out - numbers like “20,000 or 30,000 more” during
meetings without supporting empirical evidence.
More to the point, there is the question as to why municipal ratepayers
should even be providing these additional services out of a local property tax
base? Where are the provincial or
federal governments in all of this?
Indeed, in the wake of rising cases recently, the pandemic has revealed
just how truly stretched our resources are given that Thunder Bay is serving as
a regional health and social service support center on a city budget.
We have an expensive vision of local and regional municipal
government spending based on an economic base that no longer exists. That vision is justified by a “build it and
they will come philosophy” that continues after waiting 50 years for results. Thunder Bay continues to invest and prepare
for the next boom and yet that boom never comes or is much more subdued than
expected. Even the most recent
mining strategy released by the city’s Community Economic Development
Commission continues in this tradition by documenting the prospects of 7,000
jobs over the next decade - nearly a decade after the prospects for the Ring of
Fire’s mining boom were first pronounced.
When the Mayor and Council are criticized, their rebuttal
takes the form of dubious arguments such as the need to invest today for
tomorrow and how we need to invest in our quality of life. Who can argue with quality of life or renewal
of aging infrastructure? Yet, it turns out that much of this money is being
spent on just two things – administration and protection. We have one of the highest per capita tax
levies of major cities in the province and spend the highest per capita amount
of 27 major Ontario municipalities on administration, police and fire while
managing to be one of the lowest spenders on the remainder. The need for a re-balancing of spending
priorities is obvious.
Taxes and fees go up but that is justified by our civic
leaders as all right because our cost of living and property values are lower
thereby resulting in lower taxes relative to bigger cities with more expensive
housing meaning they can be raised more because they are a bargain compared to
Toronto. This is debatable but not the
main point. If the cost of living here
was truly lower resulting in a surplus for local residents in excess of what
they need, why we might not want to keep money in our own pockets rather than
simply hand it over to the local municipal-protection-administrative-construction
complex is a question that Thunder Bay politicians do not want to answer.
What is to be done?
The mindset and vision that has permeated our local municipal political
and economic decision-making culture needs to change. That is more difficult than you can imagine
given how entrenched the current vision has become and the short-term municipal
political and bureaucratic interests tied to specific projects and
expenditures. It is beyond the abilities
of any one individual to change an entire municipal tax and spending culture
but change needs to start somewhere. It probably also is more than just a municipal culture vision as
in the end the outlook of the entire community has been permeated by the current mindset. It is also a new community vision of what
Thunder Bay ultimately can or cannot be and do.
Changing Thunder Bay’s municipal tax and spending culture
requires four steps. First, there needs
to be a recognition that there is indeed a problem and we are a long way away
from that given the substance of debate at City Council. Second, once the problem is recognized,
there needs to be a meaningful reorientation of priorities. The current expenditure review process is
insufficient because it merely presents a smorgasbord of specific tasks and
projects to horse trade over given that administrators and councillors look at
parts rather than the whole system. The
reorientation needs to be at a broader level. Third, in keeping with the
reorientation of priorities, it needs to be followed by a major reorganization
of services. Fourth, this should then lead to renewal – a renewal of the local
municipal and community vision affecting taxes and expenditures and ultimately the quality of
life in Thunder Bay.
In the end, the new vision must be one that acknowledges
that we need to live within the economic limits of how the Thunder Bay economy
has evolved and the fiscal resources available.
Within this new limited resource base, there needs to be a shift in
priorities away from the current big-ticket items of protection and
administration and towards the social and environmental needs of Thunder Bay’s
citizens and their growing diversity. It
will be a big change and it requires leaders with a municipal and regional vision
that goes beyond short-term spending to create short-term employment projects
in the hopes that we can buy time until the next boom comes. After 50 years of treading water, it is time
to swim in a new direction.
