The Aboriginal workforce contributes up to $383 million to the local GDP, concludes a newly published report.
Contributions by First Nations to Thunder Bay’s economy is one of four areas that make up the Thunder Bay Economic Activity Index, which was developed for Thunder Bay Ventures and released Tuesday morning.
Lakehead University business dean Bahram Dadgostar, one of the index’s developers, said including First Nations economic contributions hasn’t been done before.
“We’re exploring new areas in the Thunder Bay economy,” he said.
Co-author Karen Peterson said while there is a lot of research done on concerns and issues in First Nations communities, it was difficult to find data on economic contributions.
“People don’t recognize the increase in the number of people who are graduating from university and colleges, the number of business that are here, the number of organizations that are here,” she said. “It’s more a lack of recognition of the participation that is actually going on.”
“We’re trying to open that door to look at positive signs.”
Peterson said one of the recommendations is to have a comprehensive study to gather more data about the Aboriginal impact on economic activity. And with First Nations having a younger population, that’s a chance for the city to train more people for the workforce Dadgostar said.
“That’s an opportunity for the city to capture that and also use its young people in process of production skilled labour and train them,” he said.
The index shows that Thunder Bay hasn’t had a lot of positive signs in its economy over the past few decades.
While Ontario’s population has grown by 66 per cent and the national population more than 55 per cent in the past 40 years, Thunder Bay’s population has seen virtually zero growth. As for the local GDP, while it has grown 3.4 per cent in the past decade, nationally that number is close to 20 per cent.
But Dogostar said the index shows that Thunder Bay’s economy has diversified over the past 20 years when the last economic report was done. That means it’s more resilient to international economic trends. And he’s forecasting growth in manufacturing construction and utilities in the next five years.
“We think that the goods sector is going to be a sector that will lead our growth,” he said.
Thunder Bay Ventures manager Royden Potvin said he’s hoping that the index will start being used.
“So we can measure our progress against ourselves,” he said.
