Councillors worry city’s bad rap could hamper growth

The city’s standing committee on growth is looking at the first draft of the smart growth action plan at its Tuesday meeting.

The plan is a 10-year roadmap to incentivize sustainable growth by increasing the city’s tax base, workforce and attracting new people and businesses.

The municipality gains 84 per cent of revenue from residential properties, said commissioner of growth Kerri Marshall. A total of 16 per cent comes from commercial and industrial properties combined.

The plan’s overall goal is to increase the city’s annual population by one per cent and achieve an annual tax-based growth of three per cent by focusing on growing the city’s commercial and industrial tax base.

When council got a first look at the draft last week, some councillors expressed concerns the city’s reputation for violent crime might be a challenge to that growth.

Coun.Kasey Etreni had questions about city population numbers and how it would affect crime statistics if the number of people actually living in Thunder bay is not accurately reflected in census data.

“The murder capital is based on per capita, and if our actual population is 150,000, that’s a big difference between 100,000. And so, it changes those numbers, which changes those perceptions,” Etreni said.

She asked staff whether the city has engaged with research done by outside agencies, such as Lakehead University, for example, that would help to update the city’s census data.

City manager John Collin said the plan does not have an action item to address population data.

Statistics Canada commissions a census only every four years, said Collin, and between those years, municipalities rely on estimates from the federal organization.

Earlier this year, the Thunder Bay area’s population was estimated at 133,000.

“There is work to be done for sure in terms of achieving a better understanding that we are a regional hub and we have a huge transient population that lives, works and plays in Thunder Bay for large parts of the year, if not the entire year. We need to work with StatsCan in that they right now do not have an effective way to measure that transient population,” Collin said.

A research unit at St. Michael’s Hospital and Anishnawbe Mushkiki co-led a recent survey in 2020 that concluded Thunder Bay had the biggest proportion of Indigenous people among Canada’s larger population centres and was three times more than what the 2016 census reported.

However, Collin said relying on accurate population numbers using outside research would depend “on who you talk to” because they’ll have “a different number.”

The issue he noted was that the provincial and federal governments only consider Statistics Canada census as the official data, particularly when it comes to funding.

Mayor Ken Boshcoff suggested that updating the city’s population data would entitle the city to get more funding for police, health care, and other services from upper levels of government.

Collin said the city is working on getting an “accurate articulation of the population,” but the city might have to wait until the next census.

He did offer “one small cautionary tale” when it comes to going after funding based on population.

“Some of the funding we get from other orders of government is because our population is low. So, this is to a degree a double-edged sword, but I think in the whole, an accurate reflection of our population is important. We take the point here today, we’ll take it away, and we’ll see if we can roll this into some form of action item,” Collin said.

Coun.Dominic Pasqualino urged city staff to consider the challenges they will face in attracting new businesses looking to invest in the city.

“Unfortunately, Thunder Bay has a reputation, and it’s not a good reputation. It’s a reputation with crime, with the amount of assaults, and, as a matter of fact, the police in the last couple of weeks have had a very tough couple of weeks,” Pasqualino said.

“I think that’s kind of like the elephant in the room that we have to acknowledge with this, because if people don’t feel safe, it’s going to be difficult to come here.”

Pasqualino referenced several incidents that the Thunder Bay Police Service have been investigating, such as a rash of businesses along Red River Road, whose windows have been broken, and people breaking into cars in Northwood.

“I really hope that we can work together and make a plan so that Thunder Bay can have a reputation of being a friendly city, a city where people feel safe, where you can walk out at night, and I know that that’s going to be very, very difficult,” Pasqualino said.

“But ultimately, you can have the best sports arena, and great hunting and fishing and all the other things, but if people don’t feel safe and if businesses don’t feel secure, that’s going to be the thing to do.” – tbnewswatch.com

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or our high salaried residents of City Hall might go in the opposite direction and get smaller.  Get the population under 100,000 and the city will not even qualify to be on the list.  Only cities with a population of 100,000 or greater .

Sooo how does one go about dumping 33,000 people?

The city could cut Neebing and McIntyre wards.  That would get rid a good number of people.

The other option is that the city has one really bad year where there are 33,000 murders.  After that year, its smooth sailing.

Or maybe a combination of both.

Anyway, just a thought.