The illusory campaign promises of jobs, jobs, jobs

Another municipal election, another barrage of campaign promises to boost the local economy. Yeah, right.

I’ve never been a true believer in the ability of a small- to medium-sized city to significantly influence the economic fortunes of its citizens. Those sort of potential rests with international power brokers the federal government, the province and the market forces unleashed by their actions.

On the other hand, you can’t blame local yokels for chatting up their alleged influence. Voters have been conditioned to hearing about jobs, jobs, jobs during federal and provincial elections, so they’ve come to expect the same from municipal leaders.

St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik played to these desires very well in the 2014 votefest. He understandably drew attention to his business cred as chamber of commerce boss and ran a powerful ad that heaped scorn on the lame economic efforts of past councils.

The ad noted the city’s high unemployment rate for youth, lamented the poor grade the Conference Board of Canada gave the city for attracting skilled workers and bemoaned MoneySense magazine’s ranking of St. Catharines as the 134th best place to live in Canada out of 201 places.

No such bad news exists this time around.

The city’s doing swimmingly, thank you very much. Indeed, the National Bank of Canada has ranked the regional economy as the second strongest in the country.

Our exalted status was achieved primarily through our soaring real estate prices, an impressive uptick a cynic might say was due, in large part, to a previously sleepy housing market having a lot more room to grow the past year than other Greater Toronto Area communities.

At any rate, you won’t find any mention of MoneySense rankings in his campaign material now. The mayor got quite giddy three years ago when St. Catharines rose to 99 in the rankings. Alas, it dropped to 134th place the following year. In 2017, the city occupied 234th place. Mind you, the pool of ranked municipalities had jumped to 417. This year, we’re back up to 180.

Point is, politicians cherry-pick the good economic news and ignore the less flattering stuff. Surprise!

Some good things have happened in St. Catharines this past council term on the economic front and some discouraging things, too. What role the city played on either front is highly questionable.

Take, for instance, the discouraging part. When this council was sworn in following the 2014 election, there were four highprofile in-filling projects on the scene — Port Dalhousie’s commercial core; the old Ontario Street GM plant; the old Hotel Dieu; and the old St. Catharines General Hospital property. Four years later, there has been little movement.

Grandson of Port Tower and the GM redevelopment seem hopeless at this point. Promises for the St. Catharines General site keep being made, but nothing happens. Hopes remain high for the Dieu property, given the seniors housing plans of major developer Seasons. Still, it’s been a very slow process.

Hard to imagine the city’s at fault in any of this, though. It’s the state of the market.

But if political incumbents are going to brag about economic accomplishments, I thought it was worth at least mentioning some stuff you won’t find on brochures.

Not that Sendzik has much to worry about. No offence to those — Richard Stephens, Johnny Tischler and Tunde Soniregan — challenging him for the job, but …

In the modern era (take your pick: since the 1960 amalgamation or Niagara Region’s formation in 1970), no incumbent St. Catharines mayor has been defeated when seeking a second term in office.

Indeed, the only incumbent to ever lose during this time was Roy Adams, who failed in his bid for a fifth straight mayoral win in 1985 when he was knocked off by St. Andrews Ward alderman Joe McCaffery.

But, hey, knock yourselves out, fellas.