Thunder Bay pins hopes on streetcar deal

For Toronto, it means modern, accessible European-style streetcars and the foundation of a new light-rail network across the city's inner suburbs.

But for Thunder Bay, the Bombardier streetcar contract is oxygen to a local economy winded by years of cuts to its forestry industry.

"If the Bombardier contract doesn't go through, this city will be in very deep trouble," said Larry Brigham, president of the Regional Food Distribution Association of Northwestern Ontario, which serves the region's 29 food banks.

"We've been in this recession much longer than the rest of the province," he said, citing the collapse of the forestry industry.

Since 2003, all but one of the city's seven pulp, paper and saw mills have been shuttered. The surviving AbitibiBowater plant has recently taken weeks of downtime in newsprint and paper production.

The employment picture in the city of 109,000 is grim. Thunder Bay's unemployment rate stands at 9.9 per cent compared with the national average of 8.4 per cent and 9.4 per cent in Ontario (though it's still lower than auto manufacturing cities like Windsor and St. Catharines).

Demand at the Thunder Bay food bank has increased by 46 per cent over last year, Mr. Brigham said. The social assistance caseload is up 15 per cent over a year, a city official said; the number of employment insurance recipients is up 27 per cent.

Mayor Lynn Peterson said the city's health and research sectors have grown, and she stressed there are other smaller manufacturers in the former twin cities of Port Arthur and Fort William.

But she agreed there's nothing on the scale of the 700-employee Bombardier plant, one of the city's largest private employers next to AbitibiBowater.

The TTC streetcar deal would mean "hundreds of jobs in the community for 10 years. That's a stability that would be extraordinarily welcome," she said.

A 2006 TTC order for new subway cars worth $710-million will have created about 400 jobs at the Thunder Bay plant when it reaches full production this summer. The union representing workers at the plant expects the initial streetcar order to create another 300 full-time jobs, though a Bombardier spokesman said he couldn't confirm figures until the deal is sealed. The contract requires 25 per cent Canadian content.

"It's monumental," local Councillor Andrew Foulds added. "The city and this region is looking for good news ... It's tough to articulate how important it is."

Paul Pugh, president of CAW Local 1075, said the deal would not only create local jobs, but help secure the future of the plant, built in 1912 to make railway boxcars, which could expect new investments in new technology and machinery.

The Globe and Mail
BRODIE FENLON
Friday, June 19, 209