From The Mayor's Desk

Doug Lawrance, Mayor, Sioux Lookout

Comparing Toronto to Sioux Lookout 

When we are in Toronto at advocacy meetings with Provincial Ministers and their staff, it often gets their attention when we compare Sioux Lookout to Toronto. The City of Toronto is often in the news, the headlines.  In recent times some of the topics covered have included items of interest in any municipality: consideration of a 10% tax rate increase, a new financial deal with the Province, financial assistance from Federal government for shelter and housing related to refugees and homelessness. All 444 municipalities in Ontario are covered by the Municipal Act, only Toronto is exempt having its’ own Provincial Act – The City of Toronto Act. Any attempt to compare the City of Toronto with a small northern municipality such as Sioux Lookout is challenging, but even awkward comparisons can be revealing. 
The population of Toronto, 2.85 million, is 500 times that of Sioux Lookout’s 5,750. The population served by the City of Toronto as a hub and capital for the entire Province is approximately 15 million. The population served by Sioux Lookout as a hub is 30,000.  The ratio of population served as hub to base population for each of Toronto and Sioux Lookout is the same, 5 served to 1 base. The nature of the populations differ.  That hub role can be seen in the statistics of airport passenger movements. The combined annual passenger movements at the Billy Bishop Airport in downtown Toronto plus the Toronto Pearson Airport in Mississauga is 40 million passenger movements per year.  Added together the population of Mississauga, Brampton, and Toronto is approximately 4 million.  So, for that combined population and the combined Toronto Billy Bishop and Pearson Airports there are approximately 10 passenger movements per capita per year for that base population. At approximately 160,000 passenger movements per year for a base population of 5,750, Sioux Lookout has 30 passenger movements per capita per year, nearly three times Toronto on a per capita basis. This speaks to the higher impact of our role as a hub on our municipality. Like Toronto we are a centre for health care and education.  Unlike Toronto we do not host large conferences, trade shows, arts & cultural institutions and events, professional sports teams, and large corporate head offices.
The headlines several months ago declared that Toronto was considering a 10% tax rate increase resulting in the property tax on an average residence going from $3,200 to $3,600.  In approximate numbers, a Sioux Lookout property tax rate increase of 10% would increase the tax on an average house from $4,000 to $4,400. The value of that average house in Toronto would be about 4 to 5 times the value of that average house in Sioux Lookout.  However, the percentage of the total property tax paid by the residential class in Sioux Lookout is 75%, while in Toronto it is only 54%.  The remaining percentage of property tax comes from commercial, industrial, and multi-residential – in Toronto 46%, in Sioux Lookout 25%.
In recent times headlines and media articles have spoken to the refugee crisis faced by Toronto and the provision of financial assistance from the Federal and Provincial governments to the City of Toronto.  Several months ago, a media article reported that the shelter system in Toronto was providing 9,000 beds per night to individuals suffering homelessness and 2,700 beds per night for refugees. Combining those two results in 11,700 shelter beds per night for a city with a population of 2.85 million.  For Sioux Lookout’s population of 5,750, that would be the equivalent of 23 beds per night.  On a proportionate basis the actual number of beds used daily for shelter in Sioux Lookout, including detention shelter, is almost 2 times the Toronto number. Toronto is being provided with hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance to deal with their crisis.  On a proportionate basis Sioux Lookout receives far less assistance to deal with our on-going and growing needs.
As well as size and location, another significant difference between Toronto and Sioux Lookout is representation.  Within the boundaries of the City of Toronto there are 25 Federal ridings and MP’s and 25 Provincial ridings and MPP’s, this is proportionate to Toronto’s share of the overall population.  Sioux Lookout sits within large Federal and Provincial ridings and shares one Federal MP with ten municipalities and forty First Nations and one Provincial MPP with 4 municipalities and 30 First Nations. Sioux Lookout is certainly different from Toronto with respect to representation in the Federal and Provincial parliaments.  
All in all, like people, Sioux Lookout and Toronto may be more alike than different. But like people, size, location, and representation make a difference. We will continue to advocate and point out our similarities and differences to decision makers in Toronto and Ottawa.