City of Thunder Bay aims to boost growth with new plan, reorganization

The City of Thunder Bay is taking a number of steps to increase growth, including reorganizing city administration and creating a new task force.

In a presentation to city council on Monday, City Manager John Collin said Thunder Bay is not seeing enough growth to keep up with demand.

"The more population you get ... the more businesses are attracted to a community," Collin said. "The more businesses you get, the more they attract labour to your community and therefore back to population."

"If we take a look at, first of all, population, and use the two formal measuring points of the census of 2016 and 2021, the city of Thunder Bay only grew by 1.3 per cent during that time frame," he said. "The Ontario average during the same time frame was 5.8 per cent, and the national average was 5.2 per cent, four times the growth rate in Thunder Bay."

The only census metropolitan in Canada that had a lower growth rate than Thunder Bay during that time period, Collin said, was Red Deer, Alta.

Regarding Thunder Bay's tax base, Collin said it's grown .63 per cent on average over the last 10 years and the growth rate was just .44 per cent during the last four years.

"We have grown at a rate four times less than inflation by any measure," Collin said. "What that means is a city's purchasing power has significantly decreased in each of the last 10 years, and that has resulted in tax and user rate increases above inflation, and services have gradually diminished.

"This needs to be addressed."

Collin highlighted a number of measures the city is already taking to increase that growth, including building more homes with the assistance of the federal Housing Accelerator Fund and the provincial Building Faster Fund.

"I can tell you that both are success stories," Collin said. "At this point in time, the action plan associated with two those two different funds is approximately 75 per cent complete.

"The action plan is much more than just grants," he said. "It includes community improvement plans, changes to restrictive zoning, funding for affordable housing, review of our internal processes and of course the various grants. We are doing well in terms of production.

"Our building permits to the end of September this year were 310 residential properties. Last year at the same time, it was 201. So we have increased by approximately one-third compared to last year. More importantly, in terms of our requirements for the Building Faster fund at the provincial level, we know we will hit our targets for 2024, which means the funding for 2025 is assured."

The city has not met its targets for the Housing Accelerator Fund yet, Collin said, but "we are making good progress."

"An interesting point is that our own housing study states that we need to produce approximately 350 units per year if we want to be able to sustain a high growth rate. This year we're at 301 and counting, so we're getting very close to an acceptable production rate to satisfy our growth requirements."