Social services and economy top-of-mind for Thunder Bay-Atikokan voters

The Thunder Bay-Atikokan riding has been northwestern Ontario's tightest provincial race for a generation. 

In 2018, the NDP's Judith Monteith-Farrell narrowly defeated Liberal incumbent, Bill Mauro, by fewer than 100 votes. The Member of Provincial Parliament has been decided by less than one per cent of votes in three of the last four elections.

The riding's neighbourhoods are home to concentrations of wealth and poverty. The commercial sector continues to struggle in Thunder Bay's south core, where public sector services are concentrated. Poverty has become more acute, and its effects have become more visible.

According to Elections Ontario, candidates running in the Thunder Bay-Atikokan riding are as follows:

• Judith Monteith-Farrell, NDP
• Eric Arner, Green Party
• Rob Barrett, Liberal Party
• Dan Criger, Ontario Party
• Kevin Holland Progressive Conservative Party
• Kenneth Jones, Northern Ontario Party
• David Tommasini, New Blue

Here's what some voters in the riding say they're thinking about as they contemplate choices at the ballot box. 

Suburban Thunder Bay

The Thunder Bay suburban neighbourhood of Parkdale is so quiet in the evenings for Syed Ahmed and Shumsun Siddique that they sometimes convince their son, Yousuf Ahmed, to tent with them in the back yard.

It's half a world away from Dhaka where they grew up, a city of 18 million people in Bangladesh. The 2022 Ontario election is the first in which the couple is eligible to cast ballots and while they find the local mood around voting to be more subdued than back home, they're eager to contribute.

Siddique is working on her Ph.D. in civil engineering and Ahmed is a project manager in the resource industry. Ahmed says an immediate focus on attraction of newcomers like him could create the momentum needed for retention in the long run.

"Being in Thunder Bay and the quality of health services here, I love it but I also want to see it growing and more efficient," he said. "Also in the job sector, one of the issues I feel is lack of diversity in the workplace. In our ministry on the basement floor, I believe I'm the only person of colour. In my previous workplaces, I saw the same thing."

Siddique wants to see economic development that will allow her to stay in Thunder Bay when she finishes her education, but she's also focused on her son. She signed up for a childcare wait list when she was five months pregnant with Yousuf. It took over two years for a space to open and the family continued to struggle to get daycare services that met their needs. Now she's vigilant to see he gets the attention he needs in school and the health care he needs for his eczema. 

"The opportunities are very limited in Thunder Bay so I'll be looking for someone who will make more job opportunities here," she said. "Again, the health care. We have lots of health issues. Sometimes we don't get specialists because of the lack of specialists in Thunder Bay." 

South Core Thunder Bay 

Billy-Joe Csori says the Simpson Street neighbourhood can be quiet as well, but he doesn't find it as comfortable as he did when he grew up there.

"When I was young, my daughter's age and younger in this neighbourhood, I could go out until 10 or 11 o'clock at night with no issues," he said. "Now, my daughter doesn't go out in my yard without me out there. It's sad."

The 35-year-old who lives with his partner and daughters aged 12 and three, says drug use and mental health issues have become far more visible. He counts himself among residents who are growing concerned about crime and public safety, claiming to have experienced multiple attempts at forced entry to his home as well as persistent trespassing.

The Our Kids Count volunteer wants to see more funding for schools and services supporting those with addiction and mental health challenges. He believes the province has a role to play in making the nearby overdose prevention site more effective at meeting its mandate. And he wants the province to encourage community policing. 

"More funding to places like mental health and drug addiction places and stuff like that, more funding to the police so they can actually have more bodies on the ground maybe, somebody to maybe go back to a bike patrol or a foot patrol or something so there's a more active presence in the neighbourhoods, just so they can keep an eye out for things and make the general public feel more safe."

Atikokan

You might have seen Giovanni Barbieri in the movie XXX: Return of Xander Cage or the TV show Reign, but these days, you might see him in Thunder Bay or Atikokan.

The actor and former frontman for the thrash metal band, Omicida, was driving to B.C. to buy property last year when he stopped in Atikokan for gas — and stayed.

"I came here by accident," he says. "When I was looking at the house prices compared to the national average, I thought something was off. It was either too good to be true – I wasn't going to even look at the houses when I saw the prices – and [then] I couldn't find anything wrong with it. It's beautiful."

He bought the house mortgage-free along with land he hopes to develop and commercial property in Thunder Bay's downtown south core, where he plans to build a music social enterprise.

Barbieri foresees that the public's mass adoption of electric vehicles will power the region to success as mines develop to supply lithium and palladium and ultimately work begins in the proposed Ring of Fire. 

He's already seeing a tight housing market in Atikokan while there are more jobs in the trades than available workers. He predicts demand for small business and social services will flourish and the next government needs to quickly facilitate economic expansion.

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out this area is going to experience a boom," he said. "The EV sector, it's like when we went from steam power to gas and diesel power. We're going through that same change right now, from fossil fuel to EV technology,"

"It's so sparsely populated here and there's so little land made available for residential housing that I think the government would do very well to find solutions, maybe release some new land to build on. The need is definitely going to be there within the next three to five years."