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Grimsby's Economic Growth Breakfast - Mayor's Business Breakfast 2026 Keynote Presentation
Grimsby · March 04, 2026
to see all the partners and community leaders and business champions basically of our community right here in this uh in this hall this great book. It's called local economic development and it defines quality of life as a recognition that social and environmental factors alongside economic growth contribute to improved well-being. Very important. So, my name is Frank Nell. I'm the economic growth manager for the town of Grimby. Can you hear me back there? Yeah. Okay. Um and you know quality of life is one of my favorite topics in economic development and um in this book uh we have a a whole chapter on econ quality of life. It's an important component for businesses as well. Um quality of life is not just a feel-good concept. It is a real measurable economic advantage. It it's um it's what attracts businesses. It's what retains talent and it's what keeps communities like Grimby thriving. Uh we use Canada's quality of life framework as a planning tool. A frame framework that um has attracts about 91 factors across the five domains. They include prosperity, health, society, environment and good governance. Now these indicators help u guide the policies, the programs, the investments that shape our future. In today's agenda that you have before you uh you'll see top 10 factors from an economic bond perspective, what we feel are the main uh reasons why a business may locate in our community. And uh and we have them all listed here. So I'm going to highlight some of them. You've been invited to participate today for a reason and as I go through you'll understand why. The first one on the list there is education. So, our educational partners help create a skilled, adaptable workforce. And from and and we have here today um from Brock University, Dansire, professor of finance um Goodman School of Business and April Jeffs of um she's the senior government relations advisor. So, wave at me please so that I know that you're there. You are and April is there. Uh from Niger College we have Maple Watt, director of government relations and uh Jesse Soda who is the co-op consultant career services. So if any of the businesses want to talk to Jesse over there, he's the one that gets some of those students on a co-op basis to come and work for you. From Blessed Trinity High School, we have Principal Christa Muscato and Mrs. Deflavio. Chantel say hello. There you go. And from Leona training center we have Ricardo Persie Sambra and the business ambassador Nick Chicone. These guys are always teaching about 15 50,000 students come through this training center from state and from the employment self-help center and GC members Paul Robertson. Thanks Paul. So these are some of the main leaders that shape the talent pipeline that businesses rely on. Number two, our natural assets fuel both physical and mental well-being. So, thank to Sarah Sweeney. Sarah in the room and who's our community services um director, uh Leilani Lee Gates, Leilani, she is the CEO and of the NPCA and our colleagues at NEC for protecting and expanding these wonderful areas that we enjoy. Number three, volunteerism. uh strengthens our social fabric and this is where I believe Rimsby really shines. We have tons of volunteers in our community and that's great and I think that's what pops in our commu quality of life charts. Um like and we have here Boom and Sophie Horton from United Way. There they are. Uh we also have Tracy Costco from the YMCA. There you go. Hi, Tracy. and uh Aaron Gabriel from the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Niagara. There you go. Thank you for coming. And you know uh people like these are what makes uh Grimby uh feel connected. Number four on the list is a vibrant cultural scene fuels creativity and identity. With us today, we have the BIA president Simon Wong and Vice President Daniel Vanderstein who does do a great job for our downtown. Thanks guys. uh regional uh councilor Michelle Seabour who champions our downtown market. I didn't see her today. I think she's busy with that restructuring component. Uh Ashley Whit and Dedra Burke from the Grimby Library and home of the art gallery. Um Carl Kovac from Nell's Manor. Uh a piece of heritage that I think you have to see. It's just beautiful. and our very own Brinsley Museum headed by Janet Oaks. Together we make culture a cornerstone for our community. Number five, connectivity is critical for employers and commuters. So we are grateful about a year ago uh the minister of transportation MPP Samra uh the CEO of Metro Niagara regions Matt Robinson who were at city hall and they continue to champion progress towards our gold transit station hopefully soon. Um number six safety is foundational to investment confidence. This is very important safety. Uh, thank you to Staff Sergeant Dylan Bourgeois. I didn't know him until today, but uh uh and his theme was keeping Grimby one of the safest communities in the Niger region. Number seven, housing options support workforce stability and generational needs. And Grimby is home to major investments from um from the the Santis homes that they're building. There are 85 condos downtown. Uh 136 uh purpose rentals on Nells and Main Street is underway. Uh we also have 30 Niagara Street, 90 rental units that have been approved. And in the planning process, they're not approved yet, but in the planning process, we have Rosani Homes that is considering putting 250 rental units at the Kohl's site on Main Street. We have the Wolverton uh on Maine and Elm about 150 units there as well, rental units. And the Cooper House about 305 units on John Street. And all these representatives are here, right? So, wave at me. Make sure that that's it. You're here. uh supporting Grimby is one of their main component and and um we also have with us uh people that we deal with every day and and like uh Mike Collins Williams from the West End Home Builders Association. Mike, he's been working behind the scenes with the feds in the province to see if they can pro provide us the 100% of the GSD and so that the municipalities don't have to worry about that. Right. Right. Chuck Mch uh McShane from the Niagara Home Builders Association. We also have here uh Harjab Gakal of from the Ontario Real Estate Association. And of course, we have TD Commercial and uh our friends from Meridian. And Greg Barton is here. Greg, where are you? There you are, Greg. Hopefully, you'll uh you'll stay in Grimsby a little bit longer. It's an insect. Uh, a healthy community is a prosperous community. And that's number eight. Our new West Lincoln Memorial Hospital, the major refrigeration, Peach King Community Center, or for short, the freezer or fridge, whatever you want to call it. Um, Mr. Precious. and big, these are big reasons why Grimby was ranked the number two best quality of life midsize community in Ontario by the Glo Mail um uh uh 2026 livability survey that was done just in the end of uh January. Uh number two, SO I don't know who number one is church. Also supporting this domain, we have with us Pamela and Amanda from McNal House Hospice. Uh Danielle and Stephanie from Asper Lincoln Park, the retirement living. And of course, thanks to the mayor Jordan and council, our MVP, and the many volunteers and staff who make these accomplishments possible. Number nine, and I'm almost done. Uh investors increasingly look for community's commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability. Those are very important components, environmental stewardship and sustainability. And thanks to people like George Bondar, I know he's here, George, and Marilyn McCrae uh of the Green Grimby Committee and Bruce McKenzie and former counselor Win Ferdick who I see here uh for championing the protection of the Baker's Lagoon. Most people don't even know that it exists, but it's bigger bigger bigger. Uh and um number 10, finally, we believe that transparent leadership and collaborative partnerships drive business confidence. And on that note, I'll turn things over to someone who exemplifies that leadership, our um our MC, Council Rich Frank, who is also the chair of the Bloomsy Economic Development Advisory Committee. Councilman. Good thing I lost a little bit of weight. Good morning. You leave the best for last, did you? Uh, vision, leadership, and strategic partnerships are the currency of economic development. They are also the foundation of a competitive community. As chair of Grimsby's economic development committee, I'm proud to speak about what truly sets Grimsby apart. We may have a small team, but we are delivering big results. Over the term of office, despite our many challenges, we developed a clear, strategic plan, and we stayed the course through transparent leadership, strong partnerships. We have created a confident, stable, and attractive business environment. This is my chance to boast because this is our last, I think, officially event for this term. In today's complex geopolitical climate, investors and employers don't just look at land or tax rates. They look for economic certainty. They look for business and community alignment. They look for longevity. And they look very closely at whether municipal leadership is businessfriendly, progressive, accountable, and focus on results. As Warren Buffett once said, risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. In Grimsby, we are working every day to remove that risk. We are making efficiency, transparency, and leadership our guiding priorities. And right now, business confidence in Grimby is pretty high. Let's be honest. Businesses will invest where leadership is accessible and supportive, where approvals move efficiently, where partnerships are real, not performative, where economic growth is intentional, not accidental. That is exactly what we are doing in GRU. Our economic development at town hall are aligned, strategically focused and results driven. Not study driven, not talk driven. They are results driven. Strategy is about making clear choices and then rallying people around those choices. That's the approach we have taken in Grimby's economic development. Let me give you some examples of what progress looks like on the ground. These are coming projects, not ones that have already happened. At the Anatolia Business Park, a short walk west of here, the soil will soon be moving on a 36 acre site. And some of our Anatolia folks are here today. Next year, construction will begin on a 650,000 square foot facility, bringing 500 new jobs to our community. That's pretty awesome. as the second largest will be the second largest employer in in I region. Yeah, that's serious employment. That's tax assessment, new sustainable revenue that helps relieve pressure on residential taxpayers. A couple of miles down the road east of here is the Grimsby Innovation Park, the redevelopment of the former NRB site, which is near and now completion. We work many days and hours shoulderto-shoulder with another major investor, Mr. Fiori Vaka and his partners to attract Ako, a multinational billiondoll leader in integrated energy, housing, transportation, and infrastructure solutions. Companies like ATO do not choose communities casually. They only choose communities that are committed to doing serious business that demonstrates leadership and honor their honor their commitments. And the momentum continues. An additional 150,000 square ft of industrial space fronting the service road is now moving through the building permit stage. Repurposing our employment lands and positioning Grimby for even more job creation. Yes, that's another 300 jobs. promising more new tax revenue and many economic spin-offs. These are not concepts or projections. These are approved projects with new buildings and payrolls and tax revenues in the making. These are real projects happening now. And there is more to come in the near future. So, please stay tuned. So, what does modern and progressive economic development look like? It's about attracting national and global employers, retaining and expanding our local businesses, increasing non-residential tax assessment, non-residential being a key word, strengthening and delivering diversifying our municipal revenue base rates, driving local commerce for our downtown and commercial areas, creating jobs that allow people to live and work right here at home, and building strong Business relationships is key. Let me be very clear. Industrial and commercial growth are not just about buildings. It's about new opportunities. It's about family unity and job security. And yes, it's about sustaining the quality of life that makes Grin so special. And we'll hear more about that today. When businesses thrive, our community doesn't just get bigger. It gets stronger, more resilient, and more prosperous. These new jobs will support our shops. They will support our restaurants. They will support our schools, our churches, and our community organizations. And they will support our recreation facilities and our municipal services. So, it's really important that we have a strong economic development change. This is why economic development matters. It is not a side project. It is core to municipal business and a sustainable future. I'm going to say that again. Economic development matters. It is not a side project. It is core to municipal business and a sustainable future. So, we should all wrap our arms around that. The economic development team did not sit around for this term. waiting for the opportunity to find us. We actively we actively pursued it. We made the calls. We cleared the path and we completed every inch of the way and we are winning. Our GC plays a key GC by the way Grimsby economic development advisory committee. It's an plays a key role by maintaining direct dialogue with business the business community eliminating barriers and ensuring council remains responsive data informed and forward thinking. As Peter Ducker once said the best way to predict the future is to create it. In Grimby we are creating that future through transparent governance and collaborative execution. We're not just planning for today. We're positioning goods for the next 10, 20, 30 years and beyond. The economic development is not a short-term game. Growth is strategic, responsible, and focused on long-term prosperity. We understand that economic development is not an abstract concept. It is a foundation of community well-being, fiscal stability, and quality of life. We have chosen to focus our efforts where they generate the greatest returns for our community on all fronts. So in closing to our local businesses and partners in this room here now today, thank you for your competency. Thank you for your investment and thank you for your belief in Greensby. Your success is our success and your partnership is essential to our shared future. Let's keep building that confidence together. Let's keep growing that when a municipality and its business community pull in the same direction, everybody wins. And I'll close on a quote from a famous business author by the name of Michael Porter. Economic growth doesn't just happen. It is built brick by brick by community leaders and businesses who choose to invest in the future. Thank you for your attendance and thank you for listening. And now we're going to call on our fearless leader, the mayor, to give you a few words on his view of his future. So definitely we have to do this instead. I have to do this first. No. Good morning everyone. Uh it is a pleasure to welcome here you here to our third annual mayor's business breakfast. Uh there's a lot of people here today. We have M PP Samster, uh, Councelor Freight, Councelor Vardy, Councelor Chara, um, Councelor Bradzy, and councelor How. And I'd like to also welcome um all our st town staff that's here and our regional staff as well. Certainly with our town staff, we couldn't have done this without you. Um, thank you to our business leaders, community partners, educators, and investors for being here. Your leadership strengthens not only our economy, but the very fabric of our community. This morning, you'll hear from other speakers about quality of life as an economic advantage. I'd like to briefly highlight a few reasons why that advantage is so real and powerful here in Grimby. In today's economy, businesses are not just choosing infrastructure. They're choosing communities. They're choosing places where employees want to live, where families feel safe, and where talent chooses to stay. Grimby offers that balance. We combine small town character with strategic access to major markets, direct QE QEW access, um hopefully very soon, uh go station access, uh proximity to Hamilton's airport, and easy connections to the GTA and US border. We are close to leading institutions like Brock University, McMaster University, Niagara College, and Mohawk College. Supporting a skilled and adaptable workforce. We offer beautiful parks, waterfront access, the renowned uh world heritage site, Bruce Trail, vibrant arts and heritage, safe neighborhoods, and a new hospital that strengthen strengthens health care for families and seniors alike. And at the heart of Ginsby, something special brings people together. The new major refrigeration Peach King Center. It is more than a facility. It is a place designed for movement, connection, and community. For today and for generations to come. Spaces like this strengthen social bonds and strong communities build strong economies. 72% of residents report a strong sense of belonging and that sense of connection translates directly into workforce stability and long-term business confidence. Recently that livability was recognized nationally. The Globe and Mail ranked Prince Rinsby number 37 in Canada in its most livable cities report and number two among mediumsized towns in Ontario. But what makes that recognition more meaningful isn't the number of people, it's the people behind it. Our success reflects the everyday efforts of our local educators, healthcare workers, municipal staff, and residents who choose to invest their time and energy here. It reflects the early mornings of small business owners, the dedication of volunteers, the pride of families, the generations who have invested in this town with the belief that Ginsby is something worth protecting and building upon. As many of you know, there's an ongoing regional discussion about potential municipal restructuring. I support exploring opportunities that can improve can improve efficiency and pro protect the affordability for taxpayers. At the same time, any conversation about change must be grounded in evidence, transparency, and meaningful public engagement and must always protect Ginsby's unique identity and long-term interests. As your mayor, I believe it is important to be transparent about discussions that could shape the future of our community. Any decision about our future must clearly and demonstratably strengthen Ginsby. My responsibility and my promise is to always act in the best interests of Ginsby and the people who call it home. In closing, I'd like to share that Ginsby is financially strong, well-governed, and positioned from a place of stability. Protecting our quality of life is not separate from economic growth. It is the foundation of it. Ginsby is not just a place to do business. It is a place to build a life. And that will always be a great greatest competitive advantage. Thank you everyone for being here today. Leading back ceremonies here. Let's test. Okay. the third moment you're you're waiting for but the most important I want to introduce our our keynote speaker um who I might say is just back from Peru. She will tell you about that after a little bit. Anyways, Mary Ro is a leading urban advocate and civil society trailblazer who has worked with communities across Canada and the United States. a former president of ideas that matter. Inspired by the work of Jane Jacobs, she later received a mid-career fellowship from the Blue Moon Fund that took her to New Orleans. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she spent seven years working with philanthropy, government, and community leaders to support neighborhood rebuilding through micro investments. Excuse me. Before joining CUI as president of the CEO, Mary lived in New York City and served as executive vice president of the municipal art society in New York, one of the United States oldest civic organizations focused on the built environment. Mary is a frequent contributor to national and international citybuilding initiatives including UN Habitat and the World Urban Forum and a regular media commentator and writer. Under her leadership, CUI has expanded its national and international networks to advance urban search research and collaboration, launching initiatives such as co cycles, city share and cui times local and convening senior leaders through bcf to address Canada's most pressing urban challenges. She is also a senior fellow with Shorefast and the creator, executive producer, and host of City Talk, a virtual series featuring diverse voices on today's most urgent city building issues. It's probably a very appropriate time when uh right now with what's going on uh and also in light of the fact that Quinby just received a number of awards from the Global Mail one of the nicest communities to live in. So Mary, I'm going to turn it over to you. Great. Thank you. This is yours. Um, hi everybody. Um, thank you for inviting me. I'm delighted to be here and uh delighted for us to just take some time to have this conversation together. So, what I'm going to ask you to do and I notice I'm observing you're all very well trained. Just sit on your phone. Do yourselves the gift to take 45 minutes now for us to just have a collective conversation. Don't be distracted. Don't let your kid unless you have a dying parent or a child who's in distress. That's always what I say. But let's go back to the old days when we used to be able to have this kind of focused collective conversation and we weren't constantly distracted by 11 other things or whatever you're on Facebook Marketplace that you want to grab. So um the other thing is are you happy standing back there? Because like in church there are seats up in the front. Why don't you come on? Come on down. I'm a generation. So I need this first Curtis. I need this to be on my presentation and at the moment it's not where is Curtis here. Um I did come back from Peru. I've never been there. Who's been to Peru? You've been Frank. Yeah. Yeah. You've been. It's fantastic. Hey, I went there for an advanced yoga teacher training. So that's the only reason I get them is because I get asked to do those things. But but I've got to say that I came back saturated with color. This is a country of extraordinary color and it's in the textiles, it's in the fabric, it's in the built environment, it's in everything about it and to come back to just old gray and say I sent a picture to all my my colleagues there and said here's what I'm looking at. You know, a dirty snow bankank and um so you understand I understand better why people get out of this environment at this time of year. But as I said to who was it? I think it's premier we were talking about Hawaii and how difficult it is to live in a place where there's only one season and how you get back into the cycle of life and that's one of the great things about living in southern Ontario is that we're reminded that there is a cycle of life. So I'm happy to be here with the promise of spring she says hopefully around the corner. Um I appreciate the leadership of the Globe and Mail in promoting for people to think differently about place and that's the conversation we're going to have. That's the competitive advantage that we all have is that we actually are grounded in a place and you've heard I'm a fellow at Shorefast which is the charity that was founded by Zeta Cobb in Newfoundland and she had to come to terms with the economy of her birthplace and what they had going for them was place and she is building an institute across the country building from that awareness just as I was suggesting in Peru where you're assaulted in a good way by the vis the visual stimulation of the place and that's where you you are here in Grimu. You are a place and you have all sorts of things that contribute to the uh economic advantage of this place. But that's what we're going to talk about. Um and hopefully I'll be able to get back. I will. Um so obviously this is you. I I am not going to for one second talk to you about you. You're going to talk to me about you. What I'm here to tell you is Thank you for taking those lights down. I'm sure I'm dead under this light. Um uh uh what I want to talk to you about is how do you as dwellers of a place leverage your collective assets to be able to to market, promote uh empower, invest in your place? How do you do that in a grounded way? And I've got to tell you that we are really countercultural at the moment because we are up against a narrative that is place agnostic. It's talking about I mean I heard this morning on the news that the prime minister is off to India. He's going to do an an international trade deal. He is spending all his time diversifying our economic relationships for obvious reasons. We all know why. But you don't hear place or investing in place from that government very much. Uh and you certainly don't hear it from the American government. And so what's interesting for us is the narrative which is fueled by all the the uh sort of attention that's going to tech and the measures that people are using to evaluate how the economy is doing is quite abstract from place. So we've got to steal ourselves to remind ourselves where we stand and what what we are grounded in. We raise our families, we support our friends in a place. We are we are embodied. We live in a place. We work in a place. And so you'll hear from me a lot of how do we orient ourselves? So um CUI is 36 years old. I'm a little older. Uh I've been in the uh role for I think six and a half years. It was founded in 1990 by the city of Toronto and by the time a regional government metro Toronto. It then became an international research hub. Uh and since I've been in the role, I've been trying to re-emphasize that we are I said I'm putting the C back in the Canadian nerve institute. We're about Canada. were about a horizontal narrative that we are an amalgamation of places across a vast geography with a fairly mo modest population frankly and that we are the most urbanized country in the world and urban defined for me is if you're if here's my here's my colloial definition of urban if you step outside your front door and scream does someone hear you then you're urban I I lived I lived in Gray County for 10 years and I was on a an old school and an acre at a farm And uh I could if I yelled loudly um the farmer next to me might hear me would echo through the field and then they would hear. So 95% of the population is in a community of of 5,000 or more. So urban isn't just city and it isn't just municipal with all due respect to worship. It is the experience of adjacency. It's the fact that we are interdependent with one another and that we have relationships with one another and we cultivate our social and economic and spiritual and creative lives in tand with other people. It's the magic of proximity. That is what urban is. We are not all living on an island by ourselves with no one to hear us when we scream. So that's a it's a it's a mindset that urban is interdependent and it's not necessarily at odds with rural or with suburban. It's about a sense of shared identity and collective future. Uh which is the frame that we use at CY. Now you will all have great affection for this person. She was a indomitable figure in southern Ontario who I knew well and she has this great uh set of phrases that she used. I think I think this was taken on her on her 100th birthday. I can't remember. I don't have to tell anybody here who she is but when I talk around the country I do have to tell people who this person is. And she had this great way that she sort of put forward the Canadian governance dilemma. Federal government has all the money. the provincial state governments have all the power. Even say I do this to Americans. So I stated that have all the power. True in the US as well. Uh and you you have all the problems. So she used to she used to do this all the time. You know, she would arrive in meetings and say, "Don't you see that we're the ones that have to deal with all the dysfunction?" And during CO, we really saw it. People who were struggling during COVID and would come out of their house feeling a sense of frustration or helplessness about what the heck was going on had no idea which order of government was responsible for what. And one of the great things about the pandemic is that actually we stopped caring about whose jurisdiction it was. We just rolled up our sleeves and figured out how to solve the problem. And I'm really appreciative of that moment. I try to remind people we moved quickly. We moved swiftly. We spent not one second saying no no it's not my jurisdiction. We just figured it out. Now I appreciate there's lots of ramifications of that now because we have lots of uh fiscal challenges as a result but the important thing is that for that period of time we reminded oursel what really matters and what really matters is that we create communities that meet the needs of people. That's what we're doing. That's the business you and I are all in. Whether you're running a business or working for government or working for a nonprofit or working in an academic institution or wherever you are, that's the collective experience that we're invested in. So I always add Hazel's dead so I can't ask her to do it. I always but also have all the solutions. The best remedy is from the person who is immediately delivering the service or designing the product. Your customer is what informs you in terms of what the best business practice is for you to adopt. And that's true for governance as well. So for us to create a situation which we're in often and I'm sure you hear it and I'm sure the mayor is hearing it lots is that uh municipal government is helpless. Oh no no it's all the province's fault. We're Sam it's all your fault Sam or gee it's the federal government it's all their fault. You know this this kind of defensive kind of blaming is and helplessness is is uh is reinforced by our governments but it needs to be shifted because we all have agency here. We all have responsibility for the quality of life that we provide for ourselves and for our neighbors. And we have the capacity to move in that space. And I would say with all due respect to the uh powers that be that are debating what your governance structure should be down here, you guys gals need to stay focused on the things that really matter which is whether or not you're able to provide needs, meet needs, and provide services and goods and opportunity for people adjacent to you regardless of the government's arrangement. So don't fall into the trap of saying, "Oh, you know, there they go again. We're helpless. We don't have any. We don't have any choices." We all have choices. We use them every day. How we spend our money, how we make decisions. So the solutions have to be incubated locally. And I can tell you that from the CUI's perspective, the biggest task that I have leading a national charity is to say to the government of Canada, you have to find ways to have federal leadership, national leadership, panCanada leadership that addresses the particularity of place. One size will never fit all. You cannot possibly suggest that something the solution for Cornerbrook is the same solution for Abbottzburg. It's not. And we have to find ways to get differentiation and disagregate, make money smaller, make solutions smaller so that you are in charge of your own destiny. And I think you all know that here. If you've chosen to live in Grand or you've been raised here, you know that. You know that you are always looking for wiggle room. You are always looking for where you can be particularly innovative. So this is our mission. We do this with all sorts of partners, provincial governments, federal government, chambers of commerce, economic development folks like Frank, uh, business improvement areas, individual businesses, cultural organizations, national ones, local ones, uh, uh, environmental groups, uh, institutions that are set up by government, institutions that are communitydriven, all of us together, placebased to create these outcomes, vibrancy, equity, livability, and resilience. And that is why Canada is the sum of its parts. But the parts are all different and they need different kinds of investment and different kinds of governance. That's what we do. And we're this intersection the three Ps place grounded through that people that live here and then the potential when people find themselves in a place and how do you stitch together those connections. So I'll just breeze through here. This is a slide that Zita Cobb uses often um from Shorefast. Again, working hyper rural but increasingly talking with urban audiences. This is what we're after is a network of hyper local, intensely local places. You don't all want to look the same. And that's my challenge with industrial policy. We've come out of an era where standardization and sameness was valorized. And honestly, we're moving in the other direction. Nobody wants to see Grimby looking just like I'm trying to think who I can put in that category. Canora. You do not want to look the same. You want to look and feel like Grimby. You want to be unique to this place so that people say, "Hey, I'm going to Grimby." Because there's something unusual happening in this highly scientific uh uh illustration of a principle that under uh underscores and under in my view underpins everything about livability. This is about self-organization. A city or a community that is highly uh controlled and uh regimented is a pretty dull place. What we want is a place of fabulous uniqueness and difference and you go around the corner and it's quite something different than what you saw when you just turned the corner. This kind of let a thousand flowers bloom is what proximity and adjacency gives us. It gives us a chance to let people do their thing in whatever way they want to do it. And those are the kinds of conditions that we It's hard because who's uh urban planners? Hands up. Okay, you know what I'm talking about, right? You guys always want, you know, you're taught to get people to color between the lines. And what we of course want to do is have people color outside the lines. We want fabulous places that are unpredictable and serendipitous and interesting, not the same. So that's about self-organization. That's the business we're in. And when you start to see the networks of self-organization, it's everywhere. It's in everything you do. Once you see it, you cannot see it. It's in the pattern of this um carpeting on this stairway. It's in the design of this building. I can see around see how they've actually tried to use different kinds of design to emphasize the self-organizing kind of principle of how you put materials together. And it's it's in nature all the time. It's constantly reinventing itself and creating these kinds of networks. This is uh the Mary Rose School of Urban Planning here. This is me in New Orleans in a coffee shop sketching with some community activists when there was nothing really happening in New Orleans. It was very broken down. Nothing was really functioning well. And what we started to see in that period of time is that this impulse to self-organize was almost unquenchable even when the city was completely you know 180,000 units destroyed like that was I don't know if anybody was down there during that period but it was devastated and all the kinds of things that would allow society to function were broken. So what was interesting is to see how it reformed itself. And what we saw was this. Neighbors neighbors started to meet together. How are we going to bring our neighborhood back? Oh, we've got these resources. Oh, we've got these assets. Oh, but you know what we don't have? We don't have what they have. How do we create a relationship so that we can extend from our hub into another neighborhood to be able to then do some kind of mutual exchanging? This is how communities selforgganize. It happens at every scale all the time and it's actually how the economy is organized too. So if you think of the fundamental building block, this is a a short fast slide that I steal. Um those are lyken. I just came from Peru. Lots of Lykan in Peru. Uh uh Shog Island has a gazillion old old you know like millennial old lychans. They use that illustration to talk about the interdependency that exists in the natural system and it exists in the human system too. And it's called community. It's called all of you. when you were calling out all the people that were here, I was thinking it's a perfect illustration of how we have to fundamentally organize our own community. And Jane Jacobs, as you heard, I've worked on a lot of work around her work. And she's the one that coined so many of these phrases that unless you have the engagement of a diverse constituency of folks that actually have a vested interest in a place, you will not be able to achieve a result. So the only way that you really make those places stick and be resilient is if you engage everyone. And this connective tissue piece is critical to how we understand self-organization. And that's the business that COI is in. We are in the connective tissue business as I suggested doing it horizontally. So this is what I was looking at in 2005. You heard uh the suggestion about that that I I had a sort of seminal experience there. I was fortunate enough to go down there. I knew nothing and I knew even less after having been there for six years because you realize just how really really complicated it all is. Uh but what I learned was that people are unbelievably resilient to their place. This is uh you can see if you look at the side of the slide, you can see there's still uh detriments on the ground. So they're still clearing homes, gutting homes a year and a half later. So this is around early 2007. And that business, couple bike business, canoe business, and they had gotten sick and tired of people from outside coming in and making a declaration about whether could ever be rebuilt or not. and they put that sign up and said, "We're still bastards." And it I use it all the time because it talks about the tenacity of attachment that people will really dig in and preserve what they love and what they care what they care about. And I always put this slide up just to remind people on the right, although I don't know where David Brooks is these days. I think he's left the time. So, who knows where he's working with really, but but even he acknowledged that you have to listen to local expertise. You have to draw on local problem solving. You cannot continue to bring from away big grand solutions when in fact the best answers are going to be housed locally. You guys know that and that's the point that I'm making about Canada and this is where we are counter counter cultural counterintuitive. We're in a rupture as the prime minister has said we don't have the kind of integration with the US market that we once would have had. Who knows what we will have in the future. But the key thing that we have to think about is think of that self-organizing pattern I suggested before. You have to work on connections that allow us to uh mutually benefit each other. Whether it's a business connection or a professional connection or a social connection or environmental connection, it's all about connections. And it's challenging in Canada because we're big, really big. And it's hard to we don't have a good population. Think how small we are. And it's hard. These kinds of connections can be made in all sorts of ways. So if you go to the built environment and you think about what you got to work with the assets you have here in Ginsby these are examples from other cities but they are all about using the built environment to foster connection. Where do you have an opportunity to renit a connection? If you think of the challenge in Canada we've had around indigenous communities. So much of it is that the connections were disrupted and lost. How do we restitch the connection? The indigenous culture is all about connection. How do we then in our settler ways find ways to be connected to the indigenous heritage that around surrounds us? I saw a pamphlet that somebody's produced about all the heritage assets here. It's fantastic. I'm going to take it back to the office. It's exactly the kind of narrative that we want to talk about. How do we create connections? When I was in New Orleans, it got pretty simple. We started to talk about what do we do to strengthen your community and how do we connect you to another? That's pretty much it. So if you look at the disruption, if you look at the obstacles to connection, how do you actually repair it? How do you change it? How do you reconnect? Whatever that point. So at CUI, we decided we would focus on two units of analysis, spatial build environment, main streets and downtowns. Downtowns are the heart of every community, and there can be several downtowns. It's the it's the place where things aggregate. It's the meeting place. It's the the intersection and main streets are the connective tissue. So, we've started this whole program called Main Street Canada. You can Google it, you'll see it. And we're collecting all sorts of data to tell us how our main streets function. Again, somebody said to me during the breakfast, how do you tackle the problem? You know, you know that thing about how do you eat an elephant one by the time like that's what we were looking for. What's the intervention point where you can start where you can start to catalyze that self-organizing pattern I was suggesting? We looked at Main Streets, we said it's got to be Main Street. So, we have a whole data set now. Uh we've mapped main streets across the country. I'll show it to you. It's kind of staggering. It's not the greatest map. Uh I can't, you know, I do my own slides, which is a problem obviously. Sorry. Uh but uh we've mapped there are 78,000 main streets in Canada that have a certain kind of uh elomeration of capital and business life. And if you then built your economy from that, building it around from the ground up, how do you actually empower those businesses, empower those stewards, empower those entities that are building not only financial capital but also social capital, you know, you go to your main street for a sense of again back to co you really counted on your main streets. Where can you get a local where can you locally source? Where do you meet your neighbors? Where do you get a service that you require? We've got to be thinking about how we invest in the spatial environment of which main streets are a critical part. So we started measuring all these things. We started looking at them. As I say, the disproportionate number ofmes are attached to a main street. Um businesses, newcomers are employed on main streets. Entrepreneurial opportunity exists on the main streets. Most of your kids probably got jobs on a main street. It's a fundamental building block of the Canadian economy as we've seen spatially. And so we started to create this metrics program. You could look at it. go to main street Canada you see there's a bunch of dashboards and what we're trying to do is put information in the hands of the local business person to say oh my market my domestic market this is particularly true now with the exe with the elimination of the dimminimous exemption all of a sudden you don't have a US market for your products and then you got to replace it Jane Jacobs principle you've got to import replace and one of the ways you do that is you find local consumers and you've got a unique position you look at all the way I just was looking at this material that you got you position Grimspace as the gateway and as this corridor kind of connector between the Niga region and the GTA and that is an extraordinarily important piece of vocational benefit that you bring uh that you can do that so do you have the data to support it and can you look at who's coming and who could come and who who do you want to be attracting etc and uh I I don't actually know where I got this picture I know I'm supposed to know that but I don't and people think that's Hazel looking through the window it's not but it's but it's this notion that you know Jacob's had a very very famous phrase, the planners will all know it, which was eyes on the street and basically saying we want people to be awake and aware of their environment. It's the best where's our police officer? It's the best policing approach is when we're all aware and when we're all participating and again investing in the spatial elements of your streets uh in terms of what goes on there, what is possible there really critically important. So we've come up with this national strategy which is investing in both downtowns and main streets. The thing that's important for us is it works at every scale. It works in Strathroy. It works in Grimsby. It works in Vancouver. It works in Montreal. It works in St. John's. It works in every size, every community that you work from the ground up. You work in neighborhoods up. Toronto is a big monster place, but it has neighborhood economies. It has 87 business improvement areas. It has a local f focus on how you build the economy and how you think about what is it that uh businesses and customers look for. They look for uh choice, diversity, housing, all the 10 things that you've identified in your plan. These are all things that you have agency over that you can impact that will affect people's willingness to invest, spend time, spend money, uh raise their kids, uh create create something new. And we're uh we have probably in Canada 50 downtowns that are struggling profoundly struggling uh struggling with mental health challenges, community safety challenges, homelessness challenges, all sorts of things. Again, many many many multiple factors very complicated. But the only way if you if you look at American cities 30 years ago, they had struggling downtowns and the population fled. Not a good sustainable solution. And now they're now coming back. We're trying to snip that in the bud and not have that happen in Canada, but actually double down on investing in the hearts of communities. And so what does that mean? It means coordinated services. It means all sorts of imaginative rapid response investments that will restore what I call the patula factor because when you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown. So this is part of how we reinvest in the assets that we've got, how we actually emphasize what we've got. So I always put this up. This is in my antidote to uh hazel and uh this was largely my visceral experience in New Orleans. There was an expectation that the cavalry was coming. Uh that sometime you know that the White House would come, George Bush would come. That they don't come. They don't come. So then the question is you can spend your time lamenting that. And it's not that you give up on saying that you don't you of course you need these investments but you've got to you've got to come back down to a place of that realization that there is no big daddy that urban planning is not the the era of urban planning and big daddy was a terrible era. It created all sorts of stuff that nobody wants to be in anymore. And we've learned that we don't want top down solutions that are operating in isolation community. We need always a blend a blend. And the only way that you're going to be able to secure the kind of top down investment you need is if you have a really strong horizontal set of relationships to create that groundup demand and that ground up particularity of what what it is that you need here specifically. So there are levers that you can use to allow yourself to to take charge of your narrative including rapid prototyping. Again I was saying it at the breakfast I love the size of Grimby. I love the scale. At 30,000 people, you can try some stuff. You can do small pilots. You have the capacity. Look at your counselors and mayor. They're here. You meet with them. You meet with them all the time. They are able to take risks. They are able to try things. You have more wiggle room than large large municipalities have. They get burdened by process and risk and all these things. You can try stuff. You can lead. You can be the pioneers of a particular approach because you're at a scale where you can wrap your arm around it and try it. um you need these solutions networks uh that are regional. I have varying hesitations because I'm old about the efficiency of regional government and extra tears. I think it is I think the jury's out still. I would say the jury's done but doesn't really matter. You you have to operate in the environment that you're operating in. And all we know true what what I would say is even in the presence of strong regional formal government it's the informal channels that actually get things done. It's the ad hoc um fortuitous opportunistic approaches that actually move things forward. So who can you partner with that's not in your order right now? How can you actually extend some kind of a reciprocal relationship into some other player in the region where there will be a mutual benefit? And don't be constrained by whether or not there's a regional government or whether there's this arrangement or that arrangement. You've got to try to drop all that proal stuff and just back to thinking. Go back to the pan the pandemic mindset. Get her done. Figure out who you need and then move forward. And then governments have an important role to catalyze which is what you're doing by this breakfast. And I appreciate being invited to be in front of it. You're catalyzing. Government can lead as a catalyzer, as a kind of booster, as a kind of connector to say, "Let's get on this. Let's get on this." They might have to have all the solutions and let them off the hook. Do not expect them to have the solutions. You've got the solutions. Focus in this room. we can cultivate the solutions in a collective kind of way. And there's a gazillion challenges that cities are dealing with and municipalities are dealing with and regions are dealing with and rural areas are dealing with. I mentioned downtowns. We've got encampments everywhere. Hundreds of them. Hundreds of them. There's this really interesting concept that I love from you urban planners. I borrowed it. It's called desire path. I love the notion of a desire path. People know what a desire path is. Can you tell me what a desire path is? That's interesting. A lot of you don't know. You do not. What is it? So, you might have a sidewalk, but then you see where people were cutting your grass. It is like the natural way to wild. Exactly. I know. I There's a park near me. They spent a gazillion dollars. They beautifully designed it. They had the path all laid out. And six months in, you think, "Nah, nobody's using that path. They're doing that." I love that because it's about self-organizing. It's about paying attention to what people really want and need. And as difficult as encampments are and as much of a problem it poses for everybody in every sc every aspect of our life, they are fundamentally a desire path. They're telling us something about what certain people are looking for in terms of where they can live. And they have to be respectful and thoughtful about that and not just wipe it out of our brain, but understand you see it all. You see it in all sorts of aspects of of urban life, whether it's a park use or where people want to live or how they the mobility choices they make. Uber is a desire path and as much as it's infuriating, what can we learn from it? What can we understand about what it was telling us about what people did what people choose and there are all sorts of ways fairly modest ways that's the other takeaway that I want to suggest here. There are really modest ways to catalyze something extraordinary in a community. It may just be a mural. It may be an important mural. It may have it may have resources that uh that all sorts of folks contribute to. But it's a particular piece of of action. There's a gazillion examples. You all know it. I'm sure you can go out your front door or your business and spot some modest initiative that burred people, gave them a stronger sense of attachment and belonging to their place, inspired them to act in a certain kind of way. So if you think about the sort of golden rule of how economic development fundamentally and as was suggested in the speeches here it's not a frill it's not an after remember communities exist because of economy that's why we that's why communities are they they gather around interaction and change economy defined very broadly not just in terms of money that's what a community is it is the economy and so if you think of how you're building your community building your economy leverage your existing assets identify ones that are latent that can that could be developed more. Strengthen those connections. Who can you be working with or dealing with or trading with that's adjacent to you or has access to you or some affinity to that you haven't tonight? Sit at supper time, write the names of five individuals or five organizations that you haven't talked to and reach out to them. And then you invest together in this relationship between people and place because if you invest in place and I think this is my maybe my most important slide even though it's probably the dullest to look at. Um, this is a pretty hopeless time for lots of people. This is not a buoyant time. This is a time where people feel to varying degrees a sense of foroding, uncertainty, uh, fatigue, discomfort. You know, it's not 1967 and Canada is going to be 100 years old. You know, it's a moment I, you know, I I said I made it reference to my age. There are a number of us out here of a certain age. I think we'd be hardressed to think of a time in our working life that has been maybe the early 80s during the OPEC crisis, but where there's been this pervasive feeling that things aren't right that that the narrative is not um hopeful and and people are struggling with it providing a a hopeful future for for their children and their grandchildren. The antidote to that to hopelessness and helplessness is engaging locally where you can make a difference. You can make a difference how you spend your money. You can make a difference who you employ. You can make a difference how you build your business uh in terms of how you conduct yourself with people that are in public service around you. How are you actually engaging in the service that they're providing to you and how are you co-creating whatever that future is. So this is the great antidote that provides hope is that we can build better places and that we can build places where people in place together can thrive. So um I always show this last slide. This is an old slide from my hometown London, Ontario. There we are. Two doors down neighborhood rink. I always put this slide up because I lived on a street and I had neighbors and and we skated together. You can see me with my little uh white uh auto gel, whatever his wife was his name. What was Mrs. Jelnick or his sister? Uh you know the gel neck skates and we play hockey. That's what we did. That's my seinal experience of collaboration, mutual support, engagement on a street. And then my last slide, this is out my back door. I live in Toronto and I have a condo on a back lane and uh called Jim Collway. Interestingly, I bought it before and somebody just put that on the fence. It's very small act, very interesting sentiment. That's what we're in the business of doing. That's the kinds of communities we're creating together. And I look forward to hearing more about how you're going to create friends. What all can be Thank you, Mary. That was exciting. Um, I like the word of connectivity. I think it's very important in our field. And your second or third last slide, you talk about there's money for this. That really piqu my interest. What do you mean? talk a fine friend. Yes, exactly. Yeah, we'll talk to you later and so does the BIA wants to talk to you later, I'm sure. All right. Um, we have with us as well our business ambassadors and Mary uh a year ago we started the business ambassadors. Uh we've uh council appointed 10 business ambassadors. Their role is to help us as part of our economic development team attract and retain businesses. So whether it's Mr. Breen going as far as England to do a twinning with Grimby UK to Mr. Fuda and and so on and so there's all of them are here. Can you stand the ambassadors David Mr. Breen and Mr. And thank you. And where's Nick? Where's Nick?