THUNDER BAY – According to a study commissioned by school president Brian Stevenson, Lakehead University’s Thunder Bay campus has an annual $1.3-billion impact on Ontario’s gross domestic product.
Locally the effect on the economy is between $900 million and $ 1 billion each year.
Stevenson, who is stepping down from his post at year’s end, said he wanted the report to paint a more accurate picture of the economic importance of both the Thunder Bay and Orillia campuses, a detailed study using more advanced methodologies than the simple multiplier the university had been using until now.
“I think it’s important because we are a public university, funded by the taxpayers. I want them to know and understand that we have a very positive impact, on all sorts of fronts, but economically that we are economic drivers in the community, that we create jobs and we create wealth, and that we are here in partnership with the community,” Stevenson said.
The final number – which tops $1.4 billion provincially when the Orillia campus is added to the mix – surprised Stevenson.
The school had been using a much lower figure.
“We have been saying for several years that the economic impact was somewhere around $350 million. I always thought that was too low. That was based on a very simple quantifier,” he said.
Essentially it was the amount of money spent times a set multiplier.
“When the Council of Ontario Universities developed a methodology that’s a little bit more accurate or complex, we decided to apply that and I asked the faculty of business administration to do the study,” Stevenson said.
Having a more accurate number will help the school convince municipal, provincial and federal governments understand the return on investment their contributions have, the university president added.
Spending, research and development and alumni impact were all considered as part of the study, which used data from Statistics Canada as well as the COU to compile results.
In total, spending related to university operations at the Thunder Bay campus added up to $527.4 million, with another $615 million attributed to human capital development and $159.1 million for research and development.
Charla Robinson, president of the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce, said she had no idea how high the number would be.
“I was definitely not expecting that significant of a number,” said Robinson, one of several dignitaries on hand Monday for the reveal.
“We certainly recognize that we’ve always known that the university is a huge part of our economy and our success, but to see numbers in the $1.4-billion (range) is really quite stunning.”
Coun. Frank Pullia said the numbers reinforced what most already understood.
“Thunder Bay would not be what it is today without LU,” he said.
Business administration professor Camillo Lento, who authored the report, said he didn’t have a number in mind when he began the project.
“But I did know the impact was big,” he said.
“When we came up with this number, we did quite a few reasonability checks on it and we do feel comfortable it is in the right range of where it is. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s this big.
Lento said previous studies weren’t as broad and only focused on a few areas of spending, adding the new report used an input-output model similar to the COU’s recent economic impact study that looked at all Ontario universities.
