BELLEVILLE—The draw of the supercity that is Toronto just wasn’t enough to keep Derek Fullerton hooked on his life in the suburbs.

Until two years ago, Fullerton and his family lived in Oshawa, where he taught computer animation. His career was not on the trajectory he had hoped, so he decided to follow his dreams. He bought a small farm in Eastern Ontario, and he now makes a weekly trek into nearby Belleville to sell homegrown mushrooms and pickles at the outdoor market behind the city hall.

“The people are so much friendlier than in the big T-dot. It’s a slower pace,” he said with a gentle smile, offering up samples of spicy pickled beans that he grew and canned so that he could sell them year-round.

He has a logo on his hat, a business card at the ready, a Facebook page with all the trimmings, and a marketing plan to sell mushroom-based products online. He has also recently started making mushroom jerky for the vegan crowd that pops in from Toronto.

But the influx of people like Fullerton, who leave the Toronto area for a smaller-town lifestyle, is bringing a piece of Toronto with it: climbing housing prices.

Even as the semi-rural area along Hwy. 401 grapples with the long, slow downturn of manufacturing that used to drive the region and the irresistible pull from the big city for skilled labour and youth, Belleville is dealing with an affordability crisis.

The result is a community that’s exporting its momentum-seeking young people to Toronto even as it imports one of the big city’s most pressing problems. And because the longtime residents feel forgotten, lost in the shadow of the seat-rich cities, their politics are now in play.

“We’re on the front lines of the changing dynamics of Canada,” said Mayor Mitch Panciuk. “We’ve got a good thing going on here. We just can’t sustain the growth that we have.”

Belleville’s real estate scene is no stranger to population turnover. The military base in nearby Trenton means a steady turnover of people and houses. But real estate agent Cathy Polan, who heads the Quinte and District Association of Realtors, is run off her feet these days.

“We’re on fire,” she said in an interview that was squeezed in before a seven-way bidding war. Homes here sell for about half of what they go for in the big city, but the dynamics are familiar. The volume of sales in July was almost 28 per cent higher than a year ago. Year to date, prices are up nine per cent compared to 2018. They’re up 50 per cent over five years.

Polan says bidding wars on anything under $325,000 are commonplace in Belleville. In neighbouring Prince Edward County — “The County” to those in the know — the real estate market has taken on a Muskoka feel, with Toronto retirees and young entrepreneurs alike buying up large vacation properties to enjoy the region’s beaches and wineries, or even commuting to Toronto.

Like real estate booms everywhere, there are winners and losers. If you’re selling, you’re in luck. If you’re a renter looking for an affordable place to live in Belleville, times are tough.

“People who want to work, they can find jobs here. The question is, can they afford to live here,” said Panciuk, who takes every opportunity to push federal and provincial politicians for better solutions to infrastructure and affordable housing. “I really believe that national political parties have no idea what’s going on in communities like ours.”

The federal Conservatives, with a message tightly honed on affordability, smell blood. On the heels of a strong turnout in last year’s provincial election, they see a chance to regain lost ground in the region around Belleville, Peterborough and the rural areas that buffer the Toronto suburbs.

Tim Durkin is the Conservative candidate for the Bay of Quinte riding, which encompasses Belleville. He and his team have knocked on more than 50,000 doors so far, and he says the party’s affordability slogans — “People are getting by but they’re not getting ahead” — are echoed back to him repeatedly.

“People are working, but the cost of those jobs compared to the cost of living — they’re not compatible,” Durkin said during a quick break from campaigning on Monday afternoon.

He faces an uphill battle against Liberal incumbent Neil Ellis, a former Belleville mayor who won the new riding in 2015, but Conservative insiders believe they stand a good chance in the broader, traditionally conservative region. In the past couple of weeks, Leader Andrew Scheer has spent considerable time in the area, pinpointing it as a priority.

Ellis is talking affordability, too. He’s quick to recognize that many local people’s wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of housing. “It’s a Catch-22,” he said.

But in contrast to the Conservative promises — a break on the tax on home heating and the end of the carbon tax — he points out the Liberal investments in affordable housing, homelessness and infrastructure, and he suggests there’s more to come.

Will either message resonate with the people who are so squeezed by high rents that they’re turning to the local food bank for help?

At the Gleaners Food Bank near downtown, Susanne Quinlan sees a harsh side of the affordability crunch.

“We have jobs, but they’re not high-paying jobs,” said Quinlan, the food bank’s director of operations. She notices a growing proportion of angry, single men whose skills are obsolete. She is alarmed at the perilous and frequent opioid use on her doorstep. She is worried about clients battered by the high interest on their credit cards. And she is impatient for Belleville’s first homeless shelter to open this fall so that her clients in need of a warm spot in winter aren’t forced to stay in the foyer of the public library.

The role for Ottawa, she says, is to do something big and fast for the supply of affordable housing, and to take a critical look at the interest rates marginalized people are paying on their debts.

It used to be that blue-collar workers in smaller cities like Belleville could prosper from manufacturing, but that’s trickier these days.

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Factory production is down, as it is in most places, and the sector is now 2,300 jobs smaller than in the boom times. For sure, there are still manufacturing jobs around — Kelloggs and Proctor and Gamble both have flourishing plants here, as does Magna, and Quebec-based Hexo Corp. is setting up a cannabis beverage production facility in a massive warehouse left behind by Sears. But the more robust growth is mainly in services — the casino, a new Costco, tourism, government services — and construction.

With Toronto competing with smaller centres for their skilled workers, especially those involved in the knowledge economy, places like Belleville will have a growing challenge on their hands if they want to remain vibrant, says Alan Arcand, associate director of metropolitan economics for the Conference Board of Canada.

Statistics Canada projects that over the next couple of decades, big cities will be able to hold their own, attracting skilled labour and healthy labour force growth despite Canada’s aging population. But smaller centres will see their workforce participation decline, with a shrinking number of workers supporting a growing number of retirees and people who aren’t in the workforce.

While those competing forces don’t really generate handy election slogans, they’re clearly on the mind of Belleville’s politicians when they inevitably talk about bringing their young people back home.

Said Arcand: “These cities need to generate ways to retain talent.”

Belleville by the numbers

Population: 67,666, according to the 2016 census, it was. That’s an increase of two per cent from 2011, compared to a provincial increase of 4.6 per cent over the same five years.

Median income: $34,880 in 2017, compared to a Canada-wide $35,680 and Ontario’s $35,830.

Biggest employer by sector: Retail, with 6,475 workers as of 2016. That’s down from 8,185 a decade earlier.

Biggest job losses by sector: Manufacturing, which shed 2,360 jobs between 2006 and 2016. It’s still one of the largest employers however.

Average house price: $367,267 in 2019 to date, up 8.9 per cent from 2018.

Median age in 2016: 44.3, compared to the Ontario median of 41.3.

Liberal margin of victory in 2015: Neil Ellis won the Bay of Quinte riding with 50.74 per cent of the vote. The Conservative candidate came second with 34.27 per cent.

Conservative margin of victory in 2011: Bay of Quinte was a newly formed riding in 2015, but Elections Canada reconstituted previous election results to show what would have been a Conservative victory in 2011 had the riding boundaries existed then. The Conservatives would have won with 51.81 per cent, and the NDP would have come second with 23.01 per cent. The Liberals would have had 20.88 per cent.

Sources: Statistics Canada, Conference Board of Canada, Quinte and District Association of Realtors, Elections Canada