Population drop proves need for incentives: Mayor

The 6.9 percent drop in Sault Ste. Marie's official population won't directly affect municipal finances or tax rates, City treasurer Bill Freiburger tells SooToday.com.

Unlike earlier times, provincial grants are no longer tied to population, Freiburger says.

Mayor John Rowswell says the population drop proves the need for the Northern Ontario business incentives he proposed at a meeting of Northern mayors last year.

Rowswell says the province should introduce a 50 percent reduction in corporate taxes for Northern businesses, as well as a two percent cut in the provincial sales tax.

"We need some incentives for Northern Ontario, to balance the growth that's occurring in Southern Ontario," the mayor told SooToday News.

"Michigan offers incentives to business. Rural Quebec offers incentives for businesses. We're somewhat sandwiched between the two of them.

"If Southern Ontario is hot and busy, that's where we lose all our good people to. But those people write and tell us they want to come home. They tell us about the gridlock, the long work days, and how they want to come back to a reasonable livestyle so they can have a life back," the Mayor said.

'We're the Newfoundland of Ontario'

For Joseph Sniezek, the City's manager of long-range planning, the population drop is very bad news indeed.

Northern Ontario lost almost five percent of its population, while the overall provincial population grew six percent during the same five-year period, Sneizek said.

"This situation is a continuing trend, and the governments, provincially and federally, have done nothing."

"The only province that lost the scale of population that we're losing in Northern Ontario is Newfoundland. We're the Newfoundland of Ontario.

"This is no joke. This is now coming to a crisis point. The government so far has virtually done nothing to stop the trend. The only time this trend was reversed was when the government relocated jobs to Northern Ontario," Sneizek said.

Other Northern Ontario cities

Here are the new populations for other Northern Ontario communities, with the change from 1996 in brackets:

- North Bay 52,771 (-2.9%) - Greater Sudbury 155,219 (-6.1%) - Thunder Bay 109,016 (-4.1%) - Timmins 43,686 (-8.0%)

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