THUNDER BAY - For 100 years, municipalities across Northwestern Ontario have been banding together to work on solutions to issues affecting rural communities across the region. Some of those issues date back almost 100 years, and community leaders want to see change.
The Thunder Bay District Municipal League hosted its annual conference on Friday and Saturday, with this year marking its 100th year. In its 100th year, immigration and infrastructure development leads the discussion for the municipal league.
“As we move forward to the 100 years today it’s about networking and the continuation that community group get together, see what the issues are facing our municipalities,” said Rick Dumas, president of the Thunder Bay District Municipal League and mayor of Marathon.
“Obviously we all have unique situations, but when we actually come together, they are similar.”
It is estimated that Thunder Bay alone will need more than 50,000 new immigrants by 2041 to sustain its economy, a similar situation facing communities across the northwest.
“We need that population growth, but not having that, we need to have immigration come into our northern parts of the province,” Dumas said. “But we struggle with that scenario because when immigrants come to Canada they do not want to come to the rural parts of Ontario or the colder parts of Ontario.”
Cathy Woodbeck, executive director of the Thunder Bay Multicultural Association, said the region sees approximately 500 newcomers every year and more municipalities are seeing the benefits of attracting immigrants to rural communities.
“We are starting to look at how our communities can do to settle newcomers, but also what our community needs are: employment, housing, growth to grow the communities,” she said.
There are more than 1,100 job openings throughout the district, according to Woodbeck, which offer opportunities for people of all skill levels, trades, and education.
“They are everything from the service industry, restaurant and hotels, to researchers, medical professionals, and teachers,” she said. “And incomes vary from minimum wage to more than $100,000 a year jobs.”
During her presentation, Woodbeck outlined the Northwestern Ontario Immigration Portal website, which provides information on all municipalities in the district, as well as job listings for anyone interested in moving to the region.
“We want to grow our communities,” she said. “We want our employers to be fully staffed and we want to have newcomers arriving in our communities because we want to see them survive and grow and not shrink.”
Other issues discussed included municipal reconciliation initiatives, community emergency management, and nuclear waste management. But one of the big talking points involved infrastructure, particularly aging infrastructure that has been in use since around the time the TBDML was established.
“Most of the infrastructure in our communities are aging,” Dumas said. “Marathon where I came from, we have infrastructure that is 70 years old in the ground, Thunder Bay has infrastructure still 70 or 90 years old in the ground. It is getting to the point where its life expectancy is done. We are just riding on the hopes it doesn’t break down.”
Dumas said he would like to see more commitments from the federal and provincial governments, rather than making one time funding announcements for specific infrastructure projects.
“We need those federal and provincial governments to come to the table with sustaining models, not just one time funding,” he said.
Patty Hajdu, minister of employment, workforce development, and labour, spoke during the conference and she pointed to the government’s investment of $2 billion over 10 years for a separate fund for infrastructure in rural communities.
“Those communities that are much smaller in size because what we heard is that the previous generation of infrastructure money was that those communities have a hard time tapping into the infrastructure money in the current mechanism of joint partnership with provinces,” she said.
