Oshawa is up to the challenge of welcoming more people
After exploring how COVID-19 has hastened an exodus of families from Toronto, we wondered how smaller cities are coping with the influx. Dan Carter, mayor of Oshawa — Canada’s fastest growing census area — answers our questions.
How many new residents is your city expecting?
We’re 173,000 people now, with a couple of major residential developments that we expect to add 25,000 to 30,000 new residents over the next five to years.
We had the wonderful news of the return of General Motors — that’s a huge influx of new jobs and opportunities for about 20,000 people. We’re excited and we’re preparing.
Why do you think people are moving to Oshawa?
We’ve got world-class universities and colleges and health care, including, of course, our cancer centre. It’s a safe, affordable community. That and more have been drawing people here especially for the past four of five years.
Have you seen any change during the pandemic?
There is a fundamental change in terms of “Are people going back to work or are they going to be at home?” We’ve seen the benefit of people (who), rather than buying a condominium, move out this way so they can have a bigger space, a home office. If 30 per cent of people continue to work from home, as some estimate, that will impact our community economically and in terms of what kind of changes we need to make to welcome these new residents.
What kind of changes are you seeing already?
We’re seeing this wonderful arrival of people from all over the place, which adds to the fibre of our community. We normally celebrate Fiesta Week and have all of our communities come
together to celebrate faith, dance, music, food. We’ve been diversifying our economy and also our community for about 10 years. We have 142 nations represented in the people of our colleges and universities — that brings a great deal of knowledge and ideas from around the world here to Oshawa.
You might inherit some Toronto challenges in terms of affordability, traffic and public opposition to neighbourhood intensification. There must be people who don’t want Oshawa to change.
We’ve got great staff, people in our development and planning services departments, and some time to plan for the intensification and influx of people we know is coming. Yes, we’re going to see more traffic, more houses and more people. This isn’t happening overnight, we’re embracing it in stages and continue to do things to keep Oshawa affordable, safe and with opportunities for everyone.
We also have to listen to the public with regards to the changing community and invest where we need, infrastructure and other things, so that we keep those advantages. We’re up to the challenge.
Is Oshawa’s gain Toronto’s loss?
The city of Toronto may be seeing a migration, but you’re going to see a whole bunch of people move into that city once again. People want to be part of that energy and the vibe of a worldclass city. I give Toronto a lot of credit for being able to deliver what has attracted so many people there for so long.