Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy says the City is looking to come up with a plan to attract industry and commercial business to town.
The 2021 Census showed an increase of 271 residents (1.3 per cent) in the City of Owen Sound between 2016 and 2021.
“I honestly thought we were going to be higher than that,” says Boddy, adding, “You don’t know until the numbers come out, but we’ve got close to 400 residential units that will be coming onto the market in the next couple of months, so if they’d done the census in 2022 instead of 2021, I think the numbers would have been different. I’m confident they would be.”
While 271 isn’t a large number, Boddy makes the point that in the previous census, the population in the city actually dropped.
“We were on the downturn for an approximate ten year cycle, so it’s nice to be back into the positive. In my mind, 1.3 (per cent) isn’t enough,” says Boddy.
“During the budget I talked about having a growth plan, and when you go and look at Collingwood that’s booming, or Saugeen Shores that’s booming, they have a plan of how they’re going to attract industry,” says Boddy.
Saugeen Shores’ population increased by 16 per cent to 15,908 residents in 2021, up from 13,715 in the previous census period.
Boddy moved a motion at the December 1st, 2021 budget meeting to put together a growth plan.
That motion said, “City Council directs staff to bring forward a report on the facilitation of an investment, attraction, and retention plan without hiring additional staff or increasing the budget.” It was passed unanimously in a recorded vote.
A staff report presented to council likely later this year.
Boddy says, “We’ve been talking about this for a number of years, but it keeps going onto the backburner because we’re busy doing other things.” He adds, “We really have to force that into the mix of what we have to do to put together the plan and put together the package that we would use to attract industry and put together the inventory of industrial lands and all those types of things that we’re lagging behind others that are succeeding, so it must be working for them. They’ve got a plan and they’re working at it.”
Boddy notes, in recent years the City did the ‘Are You Most?’ campaign which he says was successful in its effort to attract young entrepreneurs to the city. He says the more recent ‘Work From Home Capital of Canada’ campaign during the pandemic got a lot of attention, and he thinks it drew people to the city. “We’ve run some successful campaigns, it’s putting together the plan and the program of ‘how do you follow up on that? You run a campaign and then what do you do? So it’s trying to put together the whole plan,” says Boddy.
He notes City Manager Tim Simmonds came to Owen Sound from Vaughan, one of Canada’s fastest growing cities and has an understanding of growth, “That’s partly why we hired him, is to help us put together the growth plan and the strategy and start to move forward,” says Boddy.
In 2001, Owen Sound’s population was 21,431 in the next census in 2006, it was 21,753. It dropped in the 2011 census to 21,688 and dropped again in the 2016 census to 21,341. In the 2021 census, the population increased to 21,612.