The shroud of mystery over just how the City of Peterborough will handle economic development after the dissolution of Peterborough & the Kawarthas Economic Development (PKED) at the end of the year has been lifted a bit.
On Monday (June 24), Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith announced that the provincially funded Business Advisory Centre (BAC) — currently operated by PKED — will continue to provide services to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs under the umbrella of Community Futures Peterborough (CFP).
MPP Smith made the announcement during the CFP’s annual general meeting at the new Canadian Canoe Museum.
With the existing agreement between the City of Peterborough, the County of Peterborough, and PKED expiring December 31, economic development and tourism services will be handled in-house by the city for the first time in 25 years, with the county making a similar move.
The city’s decision was unanimously endorsed by city councillors last Monday (June 17) at the committee level and is expected to be formally approved during the regular council meeting on June 24.
Until MPP Smith’s official announcement on Monday, it was unclear if and how the services of the Business Advisory Centre (BAC), offered as part of the province’s Small Business Enterprise Centre (SBEC) program, would continue to be provided — although Peterborough CAO Jasbir Raina had revealed at the June 17 committee meeting that the city had committed to the province to have CFP deliver the service.
“We (the province) wanted to make sure that our community still has access to those (Business Advisory Centre) resources,” said MPP Smith. “We wanted to make sure those entrepreneurs who were coming forward, who needed that little bit of extra help, still had a centre in Peterborough to do that.”
MPP Smith made much of the “historic” nature of the arrangement.
“This will be very first Community Futures in all of Ontario that is entering into a partnership with the province,” he said. “They (PKED) had been running our SBEC program for a number of years. We had allocated $234,000 this year to come to Peterborough for that program. It’s had some fantastic results. There are so many companies that have gone through (BAC-offered) Starter Company.”
MPP Smith praised “the leadership” of CFP executive director Devon Girard and the CFP board in making the continuation of BAC services a reality.
“Community Futures is a federal program (funded by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario),” MPP Smith said. “The province has always had its economic development set up separate. This is the first time in Ontario’s history that those are being brought together. The leadership at Community Futures agreed to that and there will now be those two separate (funding) streams.”
Afterwards, Girard told kawarthaNOW that CFP is “thrilled” with the new arrangement that will see BAC services continued to be offered.
“We were able to present this solution to the province and have nothing but its full support to work with Peterborough & the Kawarthas Economic Development to ensure a successful transition,” she said.
“Our core focus is to deliver loans to entrepreneurs. In order to have a loan approved, you need a business plan. Entrepreneurs would traditionally work with the BAC team at PKED, develop a business plan and then come to us (CFP) for the funding portion. What we’re able to now offer, instead of two different doors across the hall from each other (at Venture North, where both CFP and PKED are located), entrepreneurs come in through one door.”
Asked if the CFP-hosted version of the BAC will retain any current BAC staff, Girard said there will be “an announcement soon on staffing.”
“We have high respect for the work that PKED staff have done and, in particular, staff of the BAC. I know all of them are looking at what their career opportunities could be but our organization would be grateful to have any one of them.”
According to a media release from CFP, both the city and county governments have also agreed to continue their financial commitment to support the BAC’s operation.
Peterborough mayor Jeff Leal also spoke Monday, shedding some light what’s behind the city’s opting out of its longstanding agreement with PKED to deliver economic development services.
“It’s no secret that our region needs more jobs and more economic activity,” he said. “Peterborough’s economy has lagged behind our peers in Ontario over the last number of years.”
“A recent study by the Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Urban Research and Land Development showed that in the last few years, Peterborough ranked dead last in GDP growth among the census metropolitan areas in Ontario. Over that period, our GDP only grew by 15 per cent. Thunder Bay’s GDP grew by 27 per cent, Belleville by 38 per cent, Kingston by 40 per cent, and Brantford by 44 per cent.”
“A lack of economic growth has left the City of Peterborough with one of the weakest tax bases in communities like ours in Ontario. Our tax base is roughly 80 per cent residential and 20 per cent industrial/commercial, leaving the residential property taxpayers to shoulder a greater burden each and every year. If we don’t fix this in the near future, we’re going to hit a wall.”
While crediting PKED for “serving our region professionally and with dedication over 25 years” through the work “of outstanding people,” Mayor Leal said “We need a different approach to economic development — one that builds on the successes of PKED and bridges the gaps that have emerged.”
But MPP Smith told kawarthaNOW that the biggest roadblock to attracting new business to the region remains the absence of a “large swath of serviced industrial land.”
“That has been our challenge for the entire six years that I’ve been MPP,” he pointed out.
Further to that, he termed the dissolving of PKED “a shortsighted move.”
“PKED did not have a product to sell. You cannot bring a company of any substance if you don’t have a place for them to be. You can wash the windows all you want. If you don’t address the underlying problem, that problem will continue to exist.”
“It will be much more difficult to have two organizations (the city and the county) that are focused on their own entities instead of one organization (PKED) focused on working together collaboratively,” Smith added.
PKED was originally founded in 1998 as the Greater Peterborough Area Development Corporation, arising from the recommendations of the 1997 GPA 2020 A Vision For Our Future Report, which in part proposed a new regional approach to economic development in the City and County of Peterborough, creating a more efficient approach by consolidating the fragmented services being provided by six different organizations at the time, including the city and county.
MPP Smith warned that, unless the city and the county collaborate to address the lack of serviceable industrial land, the region will continue to miss out on major economic development opportunities.
“More than $42 billion has been invested in Ontario in the electric vehicle industry,” he said as an example. “That will stop soon because all of those major players have found their spots. We won’t have another opportunity like that for probably 40 or 50 years.”
“The county has land but it doesn’t have services. The city has services but it doesn’t have land. Both know they need to work together to make something happen. Sit down at the table and make it happen.”
