Thunder Bay is pitching itself as Canada's most affordable city. Will that draw in new workers?
CBC
As Canadian urbanites look for more affordable housing, officials in Thunder Bay are pitching the northwestern Ontario community as one of the last cities in Canada with cheap homes for sale.
The Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission (CEDC) has resurrected an ad campaign aimed at remote workers in urban centers looking for a lower cost of living.
Jamie Taylor, CEO of CEDC, said they revived the campaign after a Royal LePage study crowned Thunder Bay the most affordable city in Canada based on aggregate home price data and median household incomes from the 2022 Census report.
"We thought it was a great opportunity for us to revive that campaign and kind of capitalize on the good press that we're getting in the community to be able to hopefully attract a few more people here," said Taylor.
CEDC is targeting major metropolitan areas like Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton, she said.
"It's really about individuals that are kind of more mobile and unattached that can just pick up their job and do it from wherever," Taylor said.
While single people without significant ties to large cities are the main target, they are also hoping to attract young families or people interested in working in Thunder Bay itself.
Thunder Bay's aggregate home price was just under $300,000 as of the first quarter of this year, said the Royal LePage report.
While purchasing a home may be significantly cheaper in Thunder Bay, the savings on rent are less drastic. The median rent in Thunder Bay is $1,200, according to 2023 Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) rent price data. This ranks it 27th out of 58 census metropolitan areas in Ontario CMHC had data on. It's still less than the provincial median or median rent in Toronto, which were $1,500 and $1,750 respectively.
As Canada experiences a surge in population, even areas that have been historically more sparsely populated are seeing growth. Northwestern Ontario isn't experiencing as high a growth rate as Northeastern Ontario or nationwide, but it is still increasing, said Lakehead economist Livio Di Matteo
"If you look at the northwest – Kenora, for example, isn't growing very quickly, and Thunder Bay is growing faster than Kenora, but not as fast as say, the South, or North Bay or Greater Sudbury," he said.
Thunder Bay's population grew by just over 2,400 since 2019, with the majority of the growth happening last year. The population surpassed 130,000 in 2023.
Di Matteo said this population growth is good news – as long as infrastructure grows with it to meet demands.
This could be a challenge for rural and northern cities like Thunder Bay, he said.
With the B.C. NDP and B.C. Conservatives neck and neck heading into election day on Saturday, there are also a record number of Independent candidates who — if voted in — could hold the balance of power in a minority government scenario. British Columbians have only elected one Independent MLA in the last 60 years. Vicki Huntington won a seat in 2009 and was re-elected in 2013. But University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Hamish Telford said the situation could be different this election cycle. Of the 40 Independent candidates running, six of them are incumbent MLAs, who carry the benefit of name recognition in their community. "So we've got Independents in this election who I think we could deem to be viable shots at actually winning a riding, which is not normal," Telford said. "They're still long shots, but they are certainly plausible candidates."
Though Bill C-282 has received cross-party federal support in Ottawa, Alberta's provincial government says it's not a backer of the Bloc Québécois legislation that aims to prevent Canada's supply-managed sectors — dairy, poultry and eggs — from being included in future international trade negotiations.
A former Canadian Olympic snowboarder and 15 others are facing criminal charges for allegedly running a drug-trafficking operation that shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Canada and used violence — including murder — to achieve the group's goals, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday.