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| 2000-05-20 Where is Ottawa's economic development plan and presence? | | | Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 City Hall's ouf of business While Council is poised to finalize the Official Plan, along with its companion transportation and infrastructure documents later this month, sadly, our city has no concrete economic plan for business diversification and investment attraction to complement the federal government presence in our region. Worse still, it does not appear that anyone inside city hall (elected or staff) or in the various local economic organizations – be they publicly funded or privately run – is struck with any sense of urgency to pick up the ball and lead on this file. And Ottawa’s lack of a plan is noticeable here in Atlanta where this scribe has been since Sunday. BIO 2009, the world’s largest life sciences trade show is taking place at the Georgia World Conference Centre and over 20,000 delegates are here from all over the planet. Delegates range from big pharma CEOs to small biotech – in health, food and energy – startups to venture capitalists, scientists, government officials, value-chain vendors and the list goes on.Industry Minister Tony Clement is here along with Premier’s Charest and McGunity at various events and panels doing their bit to drum up investment in Canada. But apart from federal officials and yours truly, I couldn’t spot one Ottawa person of economic development prowess at yesterday’s Ontario kickoff breakfast. This was odd as I seem to remember some local group during my time at city hall trumpeting our niche in biomedical research and clean energy. So during a break in one panel session a quick to Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) web site confirmed my hunch.OCRI, who bill themselves as the Ottawa’s Lead Economic Development Corporation, have an entire section of their site devoted to life sciences and claim the existence of cleantech (next generation energy) and medtech (medical and assistive devices) clusters in our region. In and of itself this is good. But if we are not on the world stage at an event like BIO to market our city’s enviable quality of life, top flight bilingual talent, key academic health sciences centres and proximity to key federal research institutes and decision makers, how do we expect to grow these clusters? Especially when one considers that over 100 countries, states, and metropolitan economic development organizations are here amongst a contingent of 2,200 exhibitors.As a city we have become complacent in attracting new investment and corporate head offices. We cannot continue to simply rely on federal government incremental growth and the stoic pace and rut in which we seem to be stuck. A detailed and realistic economic development plan with one, five, ten and 20-year targets of accomplishment is needed if we are to grow our tax base, diversify local employment and attract new corporate players who in turn will invest the arts, culture and sporting amenities that will enrich our lives and community. And we should be demanding this from OCRI and other agencies that we partially fund through our tax dollars.On a positive note, we are fortunate that our federal and provincial partners are contributing to our new convention centre. And if we want to up our chances of getting other tri-partite contribution agreements in place for our transit plan, perhaps a new library and maybe even a stadium and other amenities at Landsdowne Park for example, a credible economic development plan is essential.Dont be surprised if the feds and Queen’s Park ask for this plan before saying yes to investing in future transit and infrastructure projects. | | |
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