Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Head offices are big business

It almost seems trite to write about our city's economic prospects with everything else going on such as swine flu, a massive restructuring in the auto sector, the national unemployment rate at 8% and the list goes on.

Not to diminish the trepidation with which many are watching the swine flu progress, but we need to trust our own common sense (yes, wash your hands repeatedly) and public health professionals. And if I can offer one piece of advice for politicians on this front: The best way you can do your job is to let our public health officials do theirs. But I digress.

Thankfully the effects of the global economic downturn have been minimal here in Ottawa. Our quasi-immunity from larger industrial shocks stems from our fortune of being the national capital and as such, the seat of the federal government.

In effect, Ottawa is the head office of Canada Inc. This head office status, as the corporate research group pointed out to city council a few months back, goes much farther than just employing one out of every four to five working adults in our region.

The spillover effect into every other profession, industrial sector and neighbourhood corner store are real and pronounced.

The business of government is big business. There are hundreds of companies here that do nothing but move government employees from one office to the other, supply computer equipment or office furniture right down to paper and elastics. This list of companies also provides temp help and specialty services to government such as translation, project management and meeting facilitation, for example.

Or consider the large number of accounting, legal and engineering firms that do work in our city. I suspect a large chunk of their business volume is directly with the federal government and its Crown corporations and agencies. And these professional services also work for the hundreds of associations, secretariats and federations headquartered here to lobby, advocate and influence government policy and direction.

These lobbyists and pressure groups -- a legitimate form of democratic expression -- in turn utilize a few hundred other suppliers ranging from meeting planners to web content and hosting to television and radio commercial production to graphic designers, printers, speech writers, logistics planners and the list goes on and on.

All of this activity in turn results in housing starts, appliance purchases, big-ticket item consumption, car purchases right down to clothing for the kids and groceries for dinner. Bottom line, head offices are big business.

Now ask yourself, when was the last time our local economic development agencies and officials secured a private sector head office, or even major regional installation, to come to Ottawa? Or is the pursuit of these types of white-collar intensive operations -- for which we have supporting infrastructure -- even part of the city's overall economic development strategy?

To be fair, officials are focusing on hi-tech, clean-tech and the life sciences sectors, but the heft and buying power that comes with headquarters operations should not be overlooked.

Federal and provincial infrastructure funding is great for short-term stimulus in the construction sector and is obviously welcome in terms of fixing up key pieces of our transit, road, sewer and recreation networks. But the longer term challenge of diversifying our economy to ensure the federal government is a major player, as opposed to being the dominant player, needs to be addressed. Question is by whom? And when?