Chamber shares budget priorities with government
By: Sandi Krasowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Source: The Chronicle-Journal
Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce president Charla Robinson says there are several steps the Ontario government can take in its 2026 budget to help the city achieve its growth potential.
The chamber forwarded its priorities to the government last month during the province’s pre-consultation process for a budget document that is expected to be released before the end of March. With 800 member companies under its wing, the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce represents nearly 20,000 employees in the community.
“It’s about our workforce and supporting our post-secondary institutions to make sure we have appropriate training programs for it,” said Robinson.
Immigration has been an ongoing matter for which the chamber has advocated. The immigration programs must meet the needs of Northern Ontario, and Robinson said some specifics are set aside from the provincial program that are required in the North.
“We included that we need to make sure we have the workers that we need and that they’re trained for the jobs that we have,” she said.
Another priority is about economic opportunity, and Robinson pointed out the need for support for the forest sector as they transition out of products that are in declining demand, such as newsprint, and pivot to new types of wood products such as biomass.
“We are asking for the government to keep those in mind to support the advanced wood construction and biomass action plans to ensure that they have the support they need to go through this transition in the middle of all of these trade threats,” she said.
The other opportunity is around mining. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce recently released a report called Mining 2030, and How to Unearth Ontario’s Potential.
“They identified several steps that they think the province should take to make it better for us to capitalize on the mining opportunities that we have,” she said.
“We identified a few around an exploration tax credit, and the Northern Energy Advantage program, which is an energy pricing program for large industry.”
Robinson added that they want to make sure they have the infrastructure strategy in place to ensure the housing, health care and highways support the growth that the mining sector can bring.
“Our final pieces were really about local community issues and the need for healthy, sustainable communities to ensure that we can grow our economy,” she said.
“We’re encouraging the government to keep working with municipalities to address things like substance use, homelessness and some of those social issues that are really impacting our community and our ability to grow.”
The chamber is also voicing its opposition to the proposal to merge the Lakehead Region Conservation Authority with a conservation authority in southern Ontario.
“We are urging the government to keep that a standalone. We put it in the budget document because it was originally rolled out as part of the financial update last fall by the minister of finance,” Robinson said, adding they hope that this will be reversed as part of the upcoming budget, based on the fact that it was aligned with other budgetary measures.
