HANSARD
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Ms. Diana Whalen (Chairman)
Hon. Judy Streatch
Mr. Keith Bain
Mr. Chuck Porter
Mr. Howard Epstein
Ms. Vicki Conrad
Mr. Leonard Preyra
Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay)
Mr. Harold Theriault
[Hon. Judy Streatch was replaced by Hon. James Muir.]
IN ATTENDANCE:
Mrs. Darlene Henry
Legislative Committee Clerk
WITNESSES
Halifax Regional Municipality
Mr. Jim Donovan, Manager of Economic Development
Greater Halifax Partnership
Mr. Fred Morley
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HALIFAX, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2006
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Ms. Diana Whalen
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I think we'll get started, if I could, because it is a little after 9:00 a.m. and that allows you to get started on your presentation for our witnesses or visitors today. So I would like to welcome our two guests today: Jim Donovan from the Halifax Regional Municipality and Fred Morley from the Greater Halifax Partnership. We're really glad to be able to have representation from both organizations here today. As you can appreciate, we have been saying, as members of the Economic Development Committee, that if we're looking at the province and its economy, it's very important that we get a good handle and a better understanding on HRM and your vision and direction.
So that being said, I would like to ask the members of the committee, perhaps starting with Mr. Porter, to introduce themselves.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MADAM CHAIRMAN: That being said, perhaps we could ask the guests today to introduce yourselves and start your presentation.
MR. JIM DONOVAN: Thank you very much. It is certainly a pleasure to be here this morning, albeit right after a long weekend. It's good to be right back into the swing of things. My name is Jim Donovan, I'm Manager of Economic Development with the Halifax Regional Municipality. I'm accompanied here today by Fred Morley, Vice-President and Chief Economist of the Greater Halifax Partnership.
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The Partnership and the Halifax Regional Development Agency are arm's-length agencies that work on behalf of our community in growing our local economy. We are here to speak about an economic strategy that the Halifax Regional Council adopted approximately a year ago. We would like to present to you some information on how the strategy was developed, its main themes and objectives and priorities, and what we're doing to implement it. With that, I will pass the floor, if I may, to Mr. Morley who will present our presentation here this morning.
MR. FRED MORLEY: Thank you very much, Jim. We have handed out a copy of the strategy and also a copy of the presentation that we will be working through this morning, so follow along if you wish. I won't cover every slide, but I'll deal with most of them.
Why do we need growth in Halifax, in HRM? Well, Halifax is 40 per cent of our population in Nova Scotia, it's almost half of our economy. Really, it is the heart of our province. If we want a healthy, growing province in five years, in 10 years, we need a healthy heart. I have two daughters, Claire and Colleen. I would like them to have an opportunity to live and work in Nova Scotia when they're older, in five years, in 10 years. To do that, we need economic growth.
As a community I call home, I have lived here for most of my life, I want it to be the best place in Canada - vibrant, creative, attractive, in five years, in 10 years, and for this to happen we need growth. New economic growth is not just important to me, I know it's important to all of you as well, that's why you're here. We have done well in Nova Scotia and we have done well in Halifax, but we can't take growth for granted. Cities compete - we compete for labour, we compete for creative people, we compete for investment, we compete for attention. At home, in Ottawa and across the world, competition is tough and we needed a plan. So a year ago, as Jim said, HRM adopted its first ever economic strategy. This plan is a plan to keep our kids, to grow our economy, to be competitive, to build the best community in the world.
Many partners worked together to develop this strategy. Real partnership describes how we wrote this strategy, and now partnership is how we are implementing it. Let me tell you about that. When I agreed to do this economic strategy, our first step was to build a strategic partnership and it had two critical parts. First, we struck an advisory committee. We reached out to senior levels of leadership in companies, universities and government, who would be involved in implementing the strategy once it was done. I knew that once these leaders had established the vision and goals, they would be in with both feet. I knew that once they had signed off on the strategies and actions, their organizations would work with us to implement.
Second, we reached out to middle-level managers, economists, and policy analysts. Many of those same analysts worked on the provincial strategy. Again, these
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were in the organizations we would need for implementation. I asked them to take research and writing responsibilities for sections of the strategy, so the people who would be implementing on the front line were the same people writing the strategy. This wasn't the first time these people were asked for their opinions. Consultants ask these folks for opinions all the time, but it was the first time they were offered ownership, a stake in the future of this city - their city. So the relationships were there, the trust was there, the passion was there and all these people responded. The two groups - the working group, the advisory committee - worked through this summer. Some key people didn't even take vacations, and we got the strategy done in record time and on budget.
So now we have Halifax's first economic strategy. It was written and approved by implementing partners; again, many of those organizations that worked on the provincial strategy. This strategy has every one of their best ideas, every one of their pet projects and now, as we drive this strategy forward, the passion and excitement are built in. Those who had the ideas are leading the charge, thanks to the power of partnership.
On the first page, you will see a copy of our vision. Let me just read this to you. "Our people are our community. We will improve and empower the lives of every citizen by building a prosperous, dynamic, globally competitive economy where creativity and risk-taking can flourish alongside a quality of life that is the envy of the world."
This is a future that, I think, we all want for our province and really for our city. It starts with all of us. It needs every citizen of HRM, it needs every citizen of Nova Scotia. It is about people, this strategy, it is about creativity, it is about the world getting to know us a bit better. It is about having confidence in ourselves, it is about building new partnerships and it is about having the best business climate in Canada.
Let me talk about a couple of the key strategies and few of the key priorities. I won't go through them all - there are 95 different strategies and some of them are underway as we speak; others are getting underway - but let me talk about a few key ones. Let me talk about investing in creativity. We have a number of actions to make us one of the most vibrant and unique communities on the continent and we talk about one. We have an urban heart in HRM, our Capital District, and frankly, it's time to fix it up. Yes, that means investing a little bit more government money, but it also means making people so proud of their community that they will look after it themselves.
About a year ago I was in Chicago and do you know what I saw? Late one night, I saw street cleaners cleaning the streets, gardeners replanting flower beds, but I also saw store owners jet blasting their sidewalks and people out with putty knives scraping gum off the sidewalks. The city, and its people, looking after their downtown - that's what we need in our urban heart.
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Now, let me talk about partnership, a very important element of our strategy. We have a number of actions to get us in sync, to get the three levels of government, business, volunteer organizations and the people of our community working together as partners. We have three priorities in the partnership area and let me talk about one of those. We have to make sure rural and urban HRM are connected. HRM is a big place, the second biggest community in all of Canada, and big places sometimes think in "us versus them" terms - rural versus urban. While that's part of our reality today, it can't be part of our vision for tomorrow, so we have to work hard with rural areas to make sure they have the tools they need to succeed, things like broadband and good roads. Connecting urban and rural will make all of HRM, and all of Nova Scotia, prosper. After all, we only have one economy.
So we have our strategies, I've listed a few of them. We have set our priorities, how do we implement? Well, implementation, as we see it, is about two things: it's about leadership and it's about partnership. The leadership we need is here. The leaders we need are in this room and all over the city, as far away as City Hall.
When I talked to communities across North America and talked about their economic strategies, what struck me in those communities that succeeded was the high level of commitment in those communities to succeed, right at the top. In every case, it started with that leadership in Toronto and Ottawa and Cincinnati and Houston. Strong and comprehensive economic strategies were unanimously approved by city councils, and this is where we got on October 18th, last year, just about a year ago. That approval from HRM Regional Council gave us a mandate to build the partnerships that we need to drive this strategy forward. So implementing this strategy will take a new commitment to partnership. We have some principles to guide us, but there is far too much work here for any one organization to do, so we are developing what we call an alignment of strategic intent for economic development. Real economic development will take many groups - federal government, provincial government, business, volunteers - each doing their part to make our strategy a success.
Our first step was to engage our partners and to formalize new agreements with economic development organizations in HRM. It has taken a year since the release of the strategy, but now we have a new structure for economic development in HRM - a growing alignment of interest, a brand new organization responsible for implementing HRM's economic strategy. So it has taken almost 24 months since the beginning of this strategy process, but finally we're at the beginning of making the vision for our community over the next 10 years, the vision that's in this document a reality.
Thank you very much. Jim and I would be happy to take any questions you have.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. That was briefer than I expected, but that's good because we always have lots of questions here at the committee.
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The way we do this is fairly informal for this particular committee. The members will just indicate an interest and we'll go around the room and have various questions from each caucus. I don't know who would like to kick it off this morning. Howard, are you waving?
[9:15 a.m.]
MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: Well, I'll start. Who is the champion? Here we have you, Mr. Morley, the author of this document, we have Mr. Donovan, a bureaucrat who is responsible for administering it, but we don't have a champion. As I understand it, one of your recommendations was that after this report was done, that some prominent person in the private sector or someone who has some kind of standing in the community, maybe an elected official or a president of a university, should come forward and be the champion of the document. I have to say that I haven't heard boo about this document from anybody in the year since it was produced, and I have to say that they don't seem to be here this morning. Is there a champion?
MR. DONOVAN: Madam Chairman, let me answer that first of all by saying that council is the champion really at the moment. We started about a year ago, just after the strategy was adopted, putting together an implementation plan with that idea in mind, that there would be maybe an individual in the community who would speak on behalf of the strategy and provide regular updates to council and the community.
We have kind of shifted a little bit from that thinking because, really, it was kind of difficult to find one individual. The idea was to establish a structure that would not duplicate existing structures, not create new bureaucracies, but use existing organizations. The idea was floated that a board of leaders in the community would actually be the champion. In fact, that's what we're doing in merging together the HRDA and the GHP into one organization, with one overall board that would report to the community on the strategy actions and obviously report to the community through council and various other means.
MR. EPSTEIN: The report says, "Every strategy needs a champion. One person who feels a passion for the task and will be held accountable for results. In many communities, the mayor or CAO becomes the champion. Often this champion is a business leader. It is recommended that HRM appoint such a champion." I take it that's gone now, is that right?
MR. DONOVAN: Again, the idea is to set up a chair of a board of directors that would oversee the strategy implementation. That board chair would be the spokesperson. So in essence, you have a champion there.
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MR. EPSTEIN: I have to tell you that the starting point for this, which is that HRM is the main driver in terms of a geographic location for our provincial and the regional economy, is quite correct, there's just no doubt about it. It's where the population has migrated to, it's the greatest area of growth, it seems to generally have the highest standard of living, highest level of education, all of the things that will make for leadership in the economic realm. It's certainly the case that some kind of strategic vision is a useful thing.
I have to tell you that I have serious problems with this document. You mentioned at one point pet projects, in passing, and I think there are a number of pet projects that have found their way into this document, maybe at a level that's too high. One of the concerns I have about this document is that on what I see as the major thrust for economic development, that's a highly educated population, the emphasis seems purely on post-secondary education. That's not within the municipal jurisdiction. Even education at the school level is not within municipal jurisdiction, although there tends to be a tighter series of connections with the school board at the municipal level.
Parents that I talk with are very concerned about the quality of education in the school system. The kids won't get into post-secondary education if they don't get through the school system. In the school system, parents are desperate for a high quality of education. For some reason, it didn't seem to be part of the focus of this strategy, and I find that inexplicable. This is something parents cry out for all the time, I just hear it day in and day out.
Let me remind you what my constituency is. My constituency is the west end of the Halifax peninsula. This is virtually exclusively a residential area, a middle-class, residential area. These are the people you are talking about who are the managers, the middle managers, the executives. These are the people who are working in the civil service, in DND, who work at all levels of government, who are university faculty, who are school teachers themselves. These are people who are productive, inventive, talented people who desire for their children that they should be able to get in the public school system, a high quality of education. I hear it day in and day out from the parents, that they aren't getting it and they are really worried about it.
So just as a starting point, I see this as an enormous gap in the commentary that I would have expected from this kind of document. I hope you take this back to your combined entity, that when they talk about education, it's important to focus not just on post-secondary education. We are rich in the metro area in very fine post-secondary educational institutions, but we still cannot overlook the need for a high quality education system at the school system. So this is the first problem I have with this.
The second problem I have with it arises out of the observation I made for you about the neighbourhoods that make up central Halifax and central Dartmouth, people
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live here. Although you talk about quality of life and seem to see that it's important, it's equally important that people continue to be able to live in comfortable circumstances in the central areas. They want that, they want it enormously, yet they are faced with intrusions into their neighbourhoods, either of traffic or of buildings that they find incompatible.
I understand that it's not your responsibility to write the municipal planning strategy, and that there is a difference between the economic development strategy and the municipal planning strategy - the MPS is the overall planning document. Yet, at the same time, I would have thought that you can't think about quality of life issues in isolation from the fact that people do want to be able to live on the Halifax side of the harbour on the peninsula, and on the Dartmouth side of the harbour, within reasonable striking distance of the downtown core or around it as well.
I know that the way Dartmouth has grown has been slightly different than the way Halifax is, and Halifax is a peninsula and so on, but there is enormous demand for people to want to live here and to be able to maintain their neighbourhoods. I didn't see that in the quality of life section. What I saw when there was a suggestion, for example, to develop a quality of place council, it was more for marketing purposes. The orientation there was to have a council to talk about what you call a branding process, and to essentially sell our way of life. If people are being told that there is a wonderful way of life here, there has to be one or they will be extremely disappointed when they arrive if you have induced them to come here from somewhere else. I guess this is the second main problem I had with this.
There is a third one, which I think has to do with the population projections, but I think I will leave that for a moment. I know there are probably other people who want to make observations . . .
MADAM CHAIRMAN: There are.
MR. EPSTEIN: . . . but if you have responses on this, I would be happy to hear them.
MR. MORLEY: Jim wants to jump in, but let me offer a couple of initial thoughts on that. On the issue of neighbourhoods and what people want for their neighbourhoods, one of the things that I guess is important to recognize is that this economic plan largely grew out of the development of the regional planning process. I was involved also as one of the volunteer community chairs of the regional plan. That was a process that talked about defining the neighbourhoods and preserving neighbourhoods and so on, and I think most folks are familiar with that.
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So those of us who were involved in both of these undertakings saw the two things as working together. We didn't, I guess, see a need to duplicate or overlap the work that was done in the regional plan in the economic plan, given that the two are pretty much welded together and the two are meant to be used in a connected, joint sort of way.
So I agree, there aren't a lot of planning issues or planning observations included in the economic strategy. That was done purposely, because a lot of those were covered very well in the regional planning process and we didn't want to duplicate that process. Jim may have some observations on that.
In terms of the education side of things, I couldn't agree more with you. I live in your neighbourhood and my kids go to school in Halifax and the people on the advisory committee, the people on the working group, all have the same issues. We talked a lot about those kinds of issues going forward, but we decided to focus on the post-secondary side, on universities and community colleges, in terms of the strategy simply because that's something we could wrap our arms around. Maybe there's a gap when it comes to Primary to Grade 12 education that we didn't deal with, and perhaps we need to get at that going forward.
The thing about a document like this, an economic strategy, is, it's a living, breathing strategy and it will change and evolve. What we are trying to set up, in implementing this, is an inclusive process that will bring in any organization or any interests that need to be brought in to make it work, and if we need to bring in more horsepower on the P to 12 area, then we'll have to do that, if that's proving to be an area of concern. Jim, did you want to jump in?
MR. DONOVAN: Well yes, if I may, Madam Chairman, just to expand on that a little bit in response to the member's questions. I wanted to also emphasize that HRM did not adopt, in its regional plan, a comprehensive document. It is primarily a land-use plan. In a parallel manner, HRM Council adopted, along with the economic strategy, an immigration strategy as well as a cultural plan. All of these things are designed, since they were developed at the same time, the people who offered them consulted with the other authors and sometimes there was actually cross membership on the various steering committees, so these documents actually speak to each other. The people issues and the land-use issues are in those other documents, and this one is strictly economic.
In respect to the school system, I guess I was involved back in 1999, I think, HRM 20/20 it was called, a visioning exercise that was intended to form the basis for some of our regional planning and even this document. That had a very strong theme on the school system, in that all children in our community should have equal access to, if you will, equal programs in the school system because at that time there was quite a marked difference between urban and rural areas in HRM. As the member said, it's not
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really the municipal area's jurisdiction to speak to the quality of the school system and actually to manage that, but to speak on behalf of the community and to obviously bring the issues forward. That would be through council more than this document.
[9:30 a.m.]
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. I think we'll go to the next member, Mr. Preyra.
MR. LEONARD PREYRA: Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, I'm sorry I was late. I have a number of questions, but I really do want to thank you for coming in today and thank you very much for the report. It's great to see some big thinking around economic strategy and economic development. I do admire the reach of the document even though, as my colleague says, you have to wonder about the grasp of it, in terms of jurisdiction and whether or not HRM has the capacity to deliver on many of the strategies outlined in the report. That being said, I do admire the reach and I do admire the attempt to engage the public and decision makers in this kind of thinking.
I have a question as well about the interconnectedness. Mr. Donovan talked about the connection to the regional plan, the land-use plan and the immigration strategy and the cultural plan but I didn't see that really in this report. I think they have common themes but there is no connection. I just wanted to focus on some of those, starting with the immigration strategy.
I agree completely, as the Immigration Critic, that we do need to do something about immigration, both in terms of attracting new immigrants here to HRM, and also to keeping them here. I agree also with the report's focus on attracting skilled workers. However, we know that we are competing with most of the world in that area and in Canada we're competing with Alberta, where our post-secondary institutions have really become training grounds for Alberta workers. I think it's great to talk about attracting those types of skilled workers, but there isn't a strategy for keeping those skilled workers here.
Similarly, the question of attraction has to be attached to the federal strategy for immigration because as we know, the actual selection of immigrants is up to the federal government. So far, our focus has largely been on entrepreneurs and recruiting entrepreneurs within that federal umbrella and we haven't really been all that successful. We have a retention rate of maybe 40 per cent and those are the Immigration Department's strategies.
I have a question about the whole connection between attracting immigrants and keeping them here, and whether or not HRM has that capacity to do either. I can understand the part that talks about working with cultural communities, but I don't see
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how HRM can influence the role of cultural communities in the selection and the settlement of immigration.
Connected to that is a subject that we're going to be talking about later in the committee, the cancellation of those federal programs, for example, particularly things like the community access program. We know that community access plays an important part in literacy and connecting immigrant communities and settling people, and yet the cancellation of that program essentially makes it difficult to keep immigrants and generally people who have challenges with literacy here.
My first point then is a lack of interconnectedness both internally within HRM itself and the lack of connection with what the federal government and what the provincial government is doing and can do. As much as I agree completely with the idea of working with the cultural communities, of attracting skilled workers and doing things to keep them there, I don't see anything in here that says, this is the machinery that we can set up or, as my colleague says, these are the champions who are going to make this happen.
Similarly, if you look at the HRM cultural plan, again a wonderful document and I really do appreciate the attempt of HRM to focus on the creative communities, especially the young artists, especially the emerging arts. Yet, at the same time, we see that cultural infrastructure is disappearing. I'm talking about grassroots, the closure of the Bloomfield Centre, for example, the school closures that are closing the gyms and auditoriums, the fact that Halifax, the Citadel High School doesn't have an auditorium, the fact that arts and music programs are being cancelled at the lower level. There really doesn't seem to be any connection between this great dream of developing a creative community here in Halifax and the lack of cultural spaces, the lack of cultural infrastructure.
Again, I'm not sure whether or not these departments talk to each other, whether or not this economic strategy speaks to the Halifax Regional School Board and says, you know we have this plan for a cultural community and we want to make the school board a partner in that. I don't see that anywhere in this report.
Similarly, on post-secondary education, we have talked about post-secondary education as an engine for economic growth. Post-secondary education, really, is an industry in its own right, as the report here says. You have 40,000 students in HRM alone, plus the staff, plus the spinoffs and all that, yet there isn't any sense that post-secondary education needs to be supported; that we need to do something to attract students, the 40 per cent of the students who don't go to university because they can't afford it; that we need to do something about deferred maintenance of our universities, the whole question of infrastructure.
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Again, I agree that post-secondary education can be the engine of economic growth, but there isn't a strategy here for saying, this is how we're going to use post-secondary education.
Downtown Halifax was referred to several times. It's important to me, obviously, not just because I'm the MLA for Halifax Citadel. The development of downtown Halifax is important, but there is no sense here that traffic is a problem. Not just in downtown Halifax, but in rural Nova Scotia they are facing exactly the same problem, the lack of affordable, accessible, public transit. In Halifax, the high cost of parking and the high cost of generally being in the city, is driving people to the suburbs. That question - the regional plan I think does a really good job of addressing that issue - is not connected as an economic development issue and I understand you can't say everything in one report.
Those are the general themes I have here - the question of immigration, post-secondary education, creative community, downtown Halifax and the rural. They are all very important and it's great to come up with resounding kinds of exhortations to the city, to civic pride and all that, but most of what's referred to in here is not connected in any way to other documents and it's not connected to the responsibilities that HRM has, vis-à-vis the federal government and the provincial government, and I regret it because I think HRM has become a very creative organization.
These reports that you talked about, I have read many of them and I think it's amazing, it's just wonderful all that thinking that's going on. I just don't want to see so much of it wasted in the lack of follow-up and the lack of champions and the lack of machinery.
One last comment, I see I have only 10 minutes . . .
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Yes, and they may want to comment as well on yours.
MR. PREYRA: I think they would, I hope.
The other thing is on risk-taking companies. It's really important again to attract risk-taking, creative companies here, but there's no comment here on what we do about the lack of venture capital and how we go about generating a pool of venture capital.
To summarize then, I think it's great, I would support every one of these themes. I would support every one of these general objectives, but I wouldn't raise them to the level of strategy so much because HRM just doesn't have that capacity. I think their goals and their objectives - and I think the more important work has to be done in the next stage when we try to get partners and champions and try to connect it up to the machinery of government, where the real responsibility lies. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
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MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Certainly we would like to hear your comments back from the guests.
MR. DONOVAN: Madam Chairman, just to respond briefly, I may not be able to. If I don't answer all the questions, I hope you might be able to probe me further. I think we also have to look at where we were about a year ago. We didn't have an economic strategy, we didn't have a regional plan, we didn't have a cultural plan, we didn't have an immigration strategy.
What these documents have done is brought together - they have actually put a voice to the community that we can speak to other levels of government at. I guess I have only taken on this responsibility for economic development since the time this economic strategy was adopted, but I have noticed a tremendous difference in the level of engagement by provincial and federal partners on all these initiatives, because we have common goals and strategies that we can speak to.
The steering committee for the economic strategy was - there was representation at the senior levels of government, as well as the community, and so on. Those individuals are now kind of championing, within their own organizations, the advancement of our strategic directions here. It is an ambitious document, but if you look at that chart that's included with it, many of these activities are already being done. There are several, below a line, that are new initiatives, but most of them are already being done in one form or another and the strategy just provides a bit more clarity and focus on how we would carry them out.
In respect to immigration, I guess maybe I'm more optimistic. I have been happy to be associated with the Metro Immigrant Settlement Association for some time now. Prior to the adoption of a regional strategy on immigration, there really wasn't very much buzz in the community about immigration. Now we have a department - a minister at the provincial level. We have good engagement between the municipality and organizations such as MISA and the Halifax Immigrant Learning Centre, where we can determine how best we can represent immigration issues and interests and how we can reach out to organizations that are very proficient in providing service to individuals to help them stay. I think just that, in itself, is a tremendous advancement over maybe where we were a few years ago.
We're not there yet, we can't rest on our laurels, but I think we've got kind of a blueprint that we can work from.
MR. MORLEY: Just to add to Jim's thoughts. The way this strategy was approached was recognizing that this is, again, too big a job for just HRM, too big a job for just HRM and the province. It's going to require a lot of organizations and a lot of groups working together to accomplish what needs to be done.
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I guess it was a decision early on, if we were just to focus on the small things that HRM can influence in the economic strategy, it would be a pretty think document. What we can do is develop some guideposts and some paths to follow that allow us to work with partners and engage partners in this process. You're right, HRM cannot do all of this. Some of the people who can do this are in this room, and it's probably your responsibility to carry some of these forward and the document tries to recognize that.
In the specific area of immigration, for example, again, that was sort of an integrated process. The immigration strategy and the economic strategy were approved on the same day by HRM Council and the integration of the two was very much recognized.
Where we are right now is, as Jim said, working with the federal and provincial governments, which have the main responsibility on immigration, but we also recognize that communities have responsibility if they want things to happen, if they want to attract and retain immigrants, so we've jumped in on that. We have a task force co-chaired by MISA and the Greater Halifax Partnership that is working with about 30 organizations that have interests in this immigration file, and are working on specific initiatives like integration and retention, working directly with the universities and their interests in recruiting international students. Those are things that are underway right now in terms of that.
Do we have enough horsepower there? Do we have enough effort? Probably not, but at least we have a frame of reference that we're working on to make that happen.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Very good, thank you. Maybe we'll turn the floor over to Ms. Conrad.
MS. VICKI CONRAD: Thank you for coming here today and sharing this strategy with us. I do have some questions around the partnerships, and strategies around rural partnerships in particular.
First you talk about kind of not having a strategy that talks about "us versus them" scenarios and more about a partnership, but the heading here is, "Convert Rivalries into Partnerships", so I guess that distinction has already been made in the document, as opposed to saying we are partners anyway.
[9:45 a.m.]
There's no question that HRM really is one of the key economic drivers in the province, and you're absolutely right in saying that we have one economic area here and that's the whole Province of Nova Scotia. I think when building partnerships, when we're talking about that, other than talking about infrastructure and how that's so
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important, but I think recognizing that HRM really needs to be all-inclusive with rural Nova Scotia, in terms of the economic development that's happening there, recognizing that most of our natural resources come out of rural Nova Scotia. I don't see HRM really moving forward in terms of talking about buying local, supporting local produce and natural resources that come out of rural Nova Scotia. I think it's important to include that in that partnership.
Tourism, too - much of our destination packages for Nova Scotia are directed at rural Nova Scotia and I think it would be a good idea for this strategy to look at that as well, what rural Nova Scotia has to offer HRM and what HRM has to offer rural Nova Scotia. I'm wondering in part of this strategy, if the folks sitting around this table talked to any of the leaders in rural Nova Scotia when you're talking about the starting of this particular strategy and forming a partnership.
Also in the document, I'm not seeing anything in terms of sustainable economic development. Now it's great to be talking about a strong, robust economy and coming forward with good strategies, how to encourage a strong business climate, but are we talking about sustainable business climates? When we talk about sustainable, are we also talking about the greening of our industry and welcoming businesses to meet that challenge of becoming sustainable and green? I think it's important that when we're looking at a strategy for the province, for HRM, for rural Nova Scotia, that we start talking about sustainable and green when we're coming up with these types of documents.
So those are basically my comments, kind of short and to the point, and just looking for that recognition of a strong partnership with rural and HRM in terms of our economic developments.
MR. DONOVAN: Madam Chairman, I guess one of the benefits of having a regional economic strategy is that it has to focus on the entire region. I have also circulated a little briefing document that we're obtaining some information on a proposed merger of the Greater Halifax Partnership and the Halifax Regional Development Agency. One of the main reasons for that merger is to actually take the strengths of the two organizations and bring them together, so that there is better focus on our communities throughout the region and particularly in our rural areas, where in particular areas along the Eastern Shore their communities are quite removed from the urbanized area of HRM and basically have to survive as rural communities on their own.
We feel that more emphasis needs to be placed on the economic sustainability of communities like Sheet Harbour and Middle Musquodoboit and Upper Musquodoboit, for example, to build on their rural economies. We hope to be able to use some of the expertise in people like Fred, for example, to actually work in areas of community economic development in rural areas and vice versa, where the Greater Halifax
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Partnership now doesn't do community economic development and the Halifax Regional Development Agency doesn't do community economic development in urban areas, we would like to have that ability to actually undertake neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood approaches to community economic development.
With respect to sustainability, I think HRM can stand on its own track record of being a leader in environmental sustainability and in environmental industries in this province. We have proven that with respect to our waste management system. We are undertaking other green-energy initiatives related to wind generation, for example, and we intend to actually be in a position to purchase a very large portion of our electricity needs from green energy very soon - there will be an announcement on that, I hope, soon. We are looking to diversify our energy system in this region so that, basically, we don't have to rely on one particular form of energy and that provides a lot more stability and, for purely economic reasons, helps to attract economic development. So sustainability and economic development can go hand in hand.
MR. MORLEY: Again, the regional plan deals with sustainable development in a very comprehensive way and again recognizing that integration between the two documents was very important. We went probably a little light in this document on that issue, recognizing again that it was dealt with in a very broad, comprehensive way in the regional plan.
The connection between urban and rural, I think, is one of the things that we are very concerned with in this province, and very concerned with in HRM's economic strategy. There are very real connections between the economies of urban and rural. Just a couple of examples, one is the tourism industry that was mentioned. One of the areas where tourism is probably growing is business travellers coming to do business in Halifax, coming for a convention, coming for something like that, and then spinning out to rural areas with an extended vacation. That's probably one of the biggest and best sources of new tourists in our province.
Another area, kind of a specific area where this strategy is working directly with rural Nova Scotia, is in a specific strategic area of business retention and expansion. A strategy to go out and visit with companies, visit with organizations in HRM to find out what their issues are, what their problems area, how we can make sure that they can grow going forward.
The program that was operated in Halifax over the last two years, this year won Canada's top award for economic development programs. We are taking that program to six RDAs across the province. We're working directly with six broad community areas in rural Nova Scotia to implement the very same strategy that has worked so well in Halifax. In fact, the steering committee of that group is meeting right now, giving their
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first report on the accomplishments they have been able to achieve already in rural areas, using the approach that was kind of piloted in Halifax.
I have to say as well, in terms of the development of the strategy process, we not only looked at big centres around the world and what they did, we also looked at rural Nova Scotia and some of the great ideas, the great things that are being done in rural Nova Scotia, in terms of innovative economic development approaches and we tried to draw those into the strategy as well. So the integration, we tried to make it very real and we're trying to live that integration of urban and rural in the implementation of the strategy.
MR. DONOVAN: Madam Chairman, I didn't respond to the comment made on converting rivalries into partnerships. I thought maybe it deserved a little bit more of a response, sorry.
I guess one thing about the strategy is that it's quite candid in that it recognizes that in the existing condition at least, there are many organizations and groups out working to improve the economy and they are all doing great work. However, in doing so, and not often collaborating, they are seen to be in competition with each other, particularly for public dollars. We felt that to be the case, almost, with the two organizations that we fund. So the strategy took that term "rivalries" - it's not seen to be necessarily critical, but basically that's what it is - and let's try to build that energy that's in those organizations and to align them towards a common purpose, which is the direction of the strategy.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I will turn the floor over to Mr. Muir.
HON. JAMES MUIR: Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you very much, very interesting. Looking at the document, I do have a couple of questions, a couple of comments. First let me say that I admire HRM for proceeding this way because the economy here is the envy of a good many other parts of the province. There are a lot of real good things happening now and this obviously is to continue it.
I was reminded - I was telling the guys a little earlier this morning, I was sitting next to the vice-president of a major Canadian corporation a couple of weeks ago and he visited Halifax obviously for the first time in a little while and he said to me, I just can't get over Halifax, the economic boom that's going on here. I said, well you would see it, unfortunately once you get out and perhaps down on the Eastern Shore, out in Lower Prospect and these areas, you don't see the same thing. Clearly, the Halifax-Dartmouth core of HRM is really pretty hot right now. I guess one of the questions - and this is what your document is - what happens when this hotness disappears? I mean we have $270 million out there in private money, out there in Dartmouth Crossing. We have all these apartments out there and condos out in the Bedford-Halifax West area.
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Business is always sort of a barometer to me. If you count the new hotel at the airport, there's a new hotel going up on Hollis Street and I was reading in the documentation this morning that they are expecting to put two hotels out in Dartmouth Crossing. Somebody has a lot of confidence in this area and that would all be private money. Government, of course, has distributed more money in the last five or six years than it has for very, very many years, particularly in capital projects, including roads and bridges and things like that, as well as buildings, there's a whole bunch of them around here. Anyway, that's just a little bit getting into this thing. Halifax is doing pretty well and it has to continue to do well and I guess that's what you're all about.
My colleague across the floor talked about, and you commented on it, converting rivalries into partnerships, Jim. We have the two development agencies here in the county: the Halifax Regional Development Agency and the Greater Halifax Partnership. What is the relationship between you two and have both sides bought into this go-forward position?
MR. DONOVAN: I'll let Fred answer the boom question. I guess when we talk about diversifying our economy, I think we're recognizing that we need to have strength in the rural area too, because if we don't have diversity then you do rely on the boom and bust cycle and we don't really want to be like Alberta in that respect.
In respect to the merger, really, it is happening. Our council has actually been very much part of this process. We started off by trying to develop a joint implementation plan - how are we going to carry out the strategies in the existing organizations that we have and then trying to create this champion role that is needed, that needs to be at arm's length from the council. It has to be quite responsive and accountable to the community and, obviously, to the strategy. As we kind of moved through that process we got to thinking that actually a merging of the Greater Halifax Partnership and the RDA would actually benefit the implementation of the strategy.
[10:00 a.m.]
We had several meetings with council, even though council - these organizations are created on their own, both existing organizations were created under the Societies Act, and they aren't creatures, if you will, of municipal government per se. However, municipal government does provide some of their core funding. Both organizations actually came to the realization, particularly the Greater Halifax Partnership board and the chamber of commerce, why would we compete for that money when we could actually merge the two organizations? When they floated the idea by our council, our council said, well, if you can do it but still respect the values of the two existing organizations, and by all means focusing on community economic development, then proceed. So they gave us a green light and we have been proceeding in that direction. We
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have done so in consultation with our federal and provincial funding partners and it's very close to being a reality now.
MR. MUIR: Thank you. One of the areas where Halifax does have difficulty is transportation infrastructure, particularly from the container pier down not too far from here and all that heavy traffic getting in and out of the city. Have you thought, in specifics, about that, I mean that is a problem. I had somebody say to me, put a tunnel under the harbour and put that truck traffic up on that connector highway outside of Dartmouth and run it out there. There are different ways. Somebody else said, lift up the railway tracks and run a road down the railway tracks to get onto the highway. Have you done any specific thinking about that in your strategy? It seems to me that's going to be one of the keys, at least for what's called the Halifax City proper.
MR. MORLEY: Yes, the gateway and the port are one of those things that you hope, in that boom and bust cycle of construction, is going to be one of those things that kind of levels the growth rate, that continues to provide a substantial contribution to our economy. It's worth about $700 million a year to the province, the Port of Halifax. So the issues of transportation, moving containers in and out of Halifax, are very important. I know there have been a couple of things happening, again in parallel, that may help with that. One is that there has been some work done looking at the potential for an inland terminal; in other words, moving the containers out by rail to an inland terminal that would alleviate the truck traffic in the downtown for the south end container pier. So that has been looked at and it's being looked at in some detail again as well.
There has been some talk about even a truck route down the rail cut, and those kinds of things, as part of the same thinking. So people are looking at a variety of alternatives to that issue of moving traffic through the downtown.
Now it's very important because we expect the container traffic in Halifax to increase. We expect to be getting a lot more Asian traffic moving through Halifax. There's not a heck of a lot of it right now but the flow of that traffic is shifting somewhat from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast for a variety of reasons, so we expect to get a big share of that going for it. So we do have to solve those issues.
The challenge is there is a balance between what makes sense to do, in terms of an inland terminal sort of situation and what that costs, and what that does to the competitiveness of the Port of Halifax. So if you put an inland terminal in, you tell the shippers we have to move this, this is how we have to move containers through Halifax, they might just go to New York. So that's the challenge; if we put a solution in place that increases the cost to the shippers we may solve the problem but lose that $700 million. So we have to find a solution that balances both the cost structure, the competitiveness structure, and the practicality of how we move freight around in Halifax.
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MR. MUIR: Thank you. I know that some of those ships are starting to come to the East Coast and the Port of Halifax, which is such an important part of the economy here. As competitors, there are New York and Newark and places like that.
Anyway, one other question that I have before I pass it on to my colleague, the Halifax-Moncton corridor, and I'm somewhat interested in that, coming from Truro and the Colchester County area. We have a thing in Colchester County called the Colchester Regional Development Agency and, Jim, I'm sure your development is into that. For example, we have a great space out in Colchester North in Debert, the Debert Industrial Park, which has all kinds of land and rail access and highway access and everything. I guess my question is, in your thinking are you touching base with an organization like CoRDA, to see how the relationships between your organization and their organization and perhaps the one in Amherst, or whatever it might be in that corridor, will help us all?
MR. DONOVAN: Madam Chairman, I guess the answer to that is yes, and an enthusiastic yes. I know Jo Ann Fewer and Greg Brown personally so we are obviously in contact a lot, as colleagues. However, I think the bigger picture that I guess we're seeing - and this may not be popular with some - but this whole growing notion of the concept of Atlantica and using our gateway elements, such as the airport, the port and rail and our highway system, to develop that corridor through Truro-Amherst-Moncton-Saint John and into the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, to bring to market the goods that will be coming through our gateway because of our somewhat unique position, in comparison to some of the competing cities along the East Coast in that we have a tremendous asset in the form of our harbour. We would like to be able to, if we could solve some of our landside issues, grow that gateway and become a transportation hub for the province.
The whole notion of a gateway isn't to just reside in Halifax, there are many elements to a successful gateway strategy and the province has embarked on developing one that would obviously speak to the role that other ports and facilities throughout the province would play in that broader concept. I guess I'm very optimistic, maybe I'm sometimes overly optimistic but I see that as a very compelling vision, to be able to grow that corridor.
MR. MUIR: I guess following up on that, one of the things that I think in the development of Halifax is not only to send things out of Halifax but also to bring things in. I'm thinking on Highway No. 102, Moncton, you know you have your Power Centre there, you have the industrial park in Truro. In the Debert Industrial Park there is also an airport there, which is underused and has a tremendous amount of potential. That might be something that would be helpful to this area, in terms of freight movement and all of that thing, just a better solution.
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MR. DONOVAN: Madam Chairman, I think that's why it's important to look at the gateway not only solely from a Halifax point of view, but from basically the whole of the Atlantic Provinces and the provincial point of view.
MR. MUIR: Thanks very much.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Would you like to ask more questions? Otherwise, I'll step in whenever you're ready.
MR. KEITH BAIN: Thanks, Madam Chairman. First of all I want to commend the fact that these two groups have been brought together and the implementation of 95 strategies is not going to be an easy task for anyone, I'm sure. I want to get back, if I could, to the rural and urban connectivity that you spoke about. I'm looking at your committee members and certainly a mix of business and municipal leaders and everything else. I guess my question is the acceptance, the rural areas, how willingly will they accept this whole proposal as it is now, or do they have to be bought in? Will they feel they will be fairly represented in the whole process? I guess that's basically my question.
MR. DONOVAN: Madam Chairman, a couple of responses to that question. I think we recognize that the development of the strategy didn't have a large rural element to it. However, the actual implementation does. I guess my experience with rural communities is, they have that "I'm from Missouri, you have to show me", you can talk all you want but I have to see the results. So we'll obviously have to hold true to that test.
In respect to representation on what we see as a governance structure for this new organization, we're seeing about half of that from business and the other half from communities, of which rural communities would be represented. Although it wouldn't be split in geographic terms, we are looking for representatives of the broader community who, just by their experience, maybe live in a rural area or have a business. But ideally we'd like to see our governance structure, if you will, populated by broad, diverse interests that kind of represent the region in general, but obviously with each individual bringing their own unique perspective. So we're looking for that element from the rural areas as well and we have a few people in mind who would be quite willing, I think, and capable of actually serving that role, who are from rural areas.
MR. MORLEY: In terms of the strategy development process, I'll speak to that. The advisory committee was - we did bring some rural interests into that but it wasn't done necessarily to represent that rural interest. We asked all people who were on the advisory committee to put on their HRM-wide hat and think about all areas. I can say that there was a lot of representation around the table, a lot of conversation and discussion around urban and rural issues and so they were addressed fairly heavily in that process. Any representation, any suggestions that came from groups in a rural area were generally
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put into the strategy unedited - if it looks good, it's in. So that was our approach to that connection, to make sure that those rural concerns were heard as part of the economic strategy.
MR. BAIN: So this far in the process, has there been any indication of dissatisfaction from the rural areas?
MR. MORLEY: Well, I guess the biggest vote of confidence, I think, comes around the council table when every single one of the councillors from across the region, from across HRM, approved the document, urban and rural. I must say that some of the rural councillors were those who spoke most glowingly in favour of adopting the strategy. So we took that as our measure that we achieved the kind of balance we were looking for.
MR. BAIN: Thank you, Madam Chairman.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I was going to start - you've had 20 minutes but would you like to ask a couple of questions? Yes, that would be great. I want to have 20 minutes for myself, if I could, at the end.
MR. CHUCK PORTER: I'll make them quick. Thank you very much, again, for being here today. This is obviously a very interesting topic, not only here in the HRM but province-wide. You talked a bit, of course, about all the different strategies, partnerships, and how important this is to the province, not just to the HRM. I guess I'm curious, I come from a rural area myself and know there are a great number of people who travel into the HRM to help with that economic boom that you now have here. My area is also booming a bit in Hants West, in that area there, with some new development both residentially and business-wise.
I'm wondering about the sharing of ideas between your group and the RDA in the Valley and the RDA in the South Shore and different areas around the province. Is that happening and are they buying into those philosophies where you've been successful? Are there opportunities that they see, I guess is one of my questions?
[10:15 a.m.]
MR. MORLEY: We all learn from each other and I mean the provincial strategy, the community strategy that was completed before ours, I think the only one was the CoRDA strategy and we used that for some guideposts in terms of what we were doing. So we referenced some of the things that were happening in rural Nova Scotia as part of what we were able to put together going forward.
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I mentioned earlier that the most solid example of how some of these shared ideas are getting adopted is the adoption of this business retention and expansion approach across Nova Scotia. It's being adopted by six RDAs in the province and every RDA will likely follow suit over the next year or so. That's a process that began in Halifax and we kind of made all the mistakes or a lot of mistakes in putting it together and now we think we have it running pretty smoothly.
I actually have two of my staff working on the implementation of this in different communities in rural Nova Scotia. So we aren't just, here's the manual, here's the guidebook. We're actually working with them to help them implement, make sure they don't make all the mistakes that we made getting this new program off the ground. So I think that's probably one of the better examples of how sharing some of the experiences that we have had in Halifax, and even some of the mistakes we made, is probably going to help the rest of the province.
MR. DONOVAN: Madam Chairman, if I could just jump in briefly too, back to this notion of consolidating these two agencies together. In the process of doing so, regional council agreed to 10 guiding principles that would guide this process. One of them was that at the end of the day the new entity will be recognized as a regional development agency by the province. So basically at the moment, HRM, through the Halifax Regional Development Agency, is a member of the NSARDA - the Nova Scotia Association of Regional Development Agencies - but I don't believe the Greater Halifax Partnership is, so this new entity would be. I think, in doing so, the vision is for all of these economic development agencies in the province to be working in lockstep, a little bit more than they are now, to help drive the provincial economy. I think the province would like that, and I think we share that vision.
MR. PORTER: If I could just ask one more, and I just want to comment, as well, we've had some talk about who's champion in this cause. Being a former municipal councillor myself, I think it's very good that your council has obviously bought into it and is moving that along. Maybe it's not one person, but that is a significant group to be driving this force as well.
You talked about 95 different strategies in your documentation. I'm just wondering, I think you mentioned something like 10 years. I understand very much it is a living document, it will grow and it will get better, and there's always room to add better things as they come along, technologies, et cetera. Is there an actual implementation time? I looked at different things, and maybe I've missed it. I didn't see dates, like certain things would be completed on certain dates. I'm just curious. At the same time, you mentioned there are a lot of them underway, but, really, we're not talking about a completion of things just yet.
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MR. MORLEY: What we've done, and it has been a useful process, is the two organizations that are now merging, early on, did a joint implementation plan where we took all the strategies that we had some responsibility for, recognizing that we don't have responsibility for everything. Of the 95, a big hunk of those are directly the responsibility of HRM, issues around the Capital District and those kinds of things, purely HRM issues. Others are the responsibility of the economic development organizations in Halifax. Those organizations came together, day one, and developed a joint plan to implement these things with those timelines, and assigned responsibilities and so on. Many of these are underway.
I should also say, of the 95 strategies, most of them were things that were already underway. We tried to recognize, in the strategy process, that we weren't starting from square one, that there are a lot of things already underway, and many of them were pretty good, but many were things we could do better. So we recorded them in that way. I call them "do-betters", we're already working on them but let's see if we can improve how we approach them. Really, a minimum of new things are underway. So 95 sounds like a lot, but a lot of the stuff is underway and it does have timelines and it does have responsibilities assigned to all of those.
MR. DONOVAN: I might add too, Madam Chairman, that in order to kind of manage all this, the strategy recognizes that many of these are activities or ongoing things, so they don't necessarily have a beginning or an end but they had to be managed a little bit better, and the partnerships and collaboration amongst the partners had to be a little stronger.
There were 11 key priorities that we really need to get on with, whether that be the gateway or immigration, DND, and growing the federal presence here. We're already on those files, and we kind of wanted to really be on them with sort of a full-court press, on those ones. So we put most of our efforts on the priorities over the past year, although, as Fred said, many of the other activities are underway anyway or could be done better.
MR. PORTER: Thank you for that. In closing, I want to commend you on the amount of work that has been done in a year. You've gone through a great deal in putting this all together. Thank you for your optimism this morning. It's nice to see.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: With the indulgence of the committee, what I'd like to do is stay in the chair and ask my 20 minutes or so, if that's fine. I don't think there should be an objection to that today. Then, if we are able to, we'll have five minutes at the end, perhaps, for each caucus. That will take us to just before 11:00 a.m., and we have a little bit of business to attend to at the end of the meeting.
I have a number of questions that I wanted to be fairly pointed so we can maybe have some quick answers back and forth and I'll give less of a preamble. Just to start
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though, I do think it's a very impressive undertaking to try to carve out the role of HRM, in terms of the economic prosperity of the region.
What I do worry about is the fact that it requires so much collaboration and co-operation between other levels of government and we haven't really explored that fully today. I know that when I attended the economic summit that the chamber of commerce, I believe, had coordinated, which was sort of your kick-off - your first step to getting this underway - I believe they had identified what they wanted to see from the different levels of government. Each of their little working groups had said, this is municipal, provincial and federal and maybe this is the community.
I'm wondering if, at this point - I didn't see it - do you have a wish list for the provincial government, since you're here addressing provincial representatives?
MR. DONOVAN: Well, if I had known I would have been asked for one, I think I probably would have canvassed a few councillors to - no, I'm sorry, I don't have a wish list necessarily. The chamber of commerce, by the way - I haven't mentioned them very much during this proceeding - have been part and parcel of this whole process. In fact, our CAO and myself, we meet with the representatives of the chamber of commerce on almost a biweekly basis and, in fact, we're planning a community event on reporting on the implementation of the strategy. We see that very much as the chamber's role as sort of the watchdog of the strategy and all of its organizations that are working on it.
I guess in respect to - we do hear funding for economic development as a bit of an issue, particularly in HRM where, right now, the provincial formula for funding regional development agencies is sort of a one-size-fits-all. We understand that's currently being reviewed by the province now and we kind of hope that the funding formula might move to maybe something like more of a per capita or a performance-based type of approach from the position it's in now. I think that would be my only wish list.
As I mentioned in my earlier remarks, I think we have enjoyed tremendous co-operation by provincial departments in engaging on the strategy. There was a time, I think, in the not-too-distant past when HRM and the province maybe didn't see eye to eye on things, and that doesn't seem to be the case now. I think the level of municipal-provincial relationships is very high and we're working together on projects like the Commonwealth Games, for example, which I think just helps to bring people together where they can understand each other's priorities, rules and relationships, and obviously helps to build stronger communities.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you. On the role of the chamber of commerce, that was actually one of my questions so I'm glad you addressed it. They are still
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involved, because I thought they did a great job in the kick-off point and I wouldn't have liked to have seen them left out of this.
On the question of implementation, we talked about some sort of an advisory committee. Is that committee in place? You just talked now about meeting biweekly with the chamber of commerce. That advisory committee that's going to pursue this, have they been active all year? I wasn't quite clear on where they are.
MR. DONOVAN: I mentioned initially that was what we struggled with in response to Howard Epstein's question - this idea of having a committee or a champion or leader kind of driving the process forward. I guess we got ideas, we got suggestions from folks saying, well, our board will lead it and another one would say, our board would lead it or the chamber of commerce said they would lead it. It seemed that each time a suggestion was made, there was sort of like - although each of these organizations might have a broad focus, they didn't represent the entire strategy so we felt that it was necessary to put together a governance structure that would speak to the whole strategy, where even the municipality would make representation to a champion group and report on our progress, somewhat apart from our organization.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: So are they up and running?
MR. DONOVAN: Yes. So this is where we're heading, we hope.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: But we're not there yet.
MR. DONOVAN: But there isn't an advisory committee at the moment that we're working with.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Okay, not there yet. I support the idea, you do have to have a group that's going to monitor and so on.
There was another committee here that looks interesting to me and it's under your things to do. It is the Quality of Place Council. Is that in place or is that still on the wish list of things?
MR. MORLEY: That's one of the things that we really had, that's one of the things, unfortunately, that's awaiting the creation of a structure to implement this thing, I guess awaiting a champion, as well. The Greater Halifax Partnership, on behalf of the community, has continued to do its marketing, its local and international marketing work and so on. We have begun now to put in place some of our planning, I guess, around this Quality of Place Council, beginning to bring in again the stakeholders, people who have something to do with marketing the community broadly, getting all these folks in a room
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and beginning to work with them on a comprehensive strategy going forward for marketing.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Could I ask you, both the Greater Halifax Partnership and the metro chamber, or now the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, have done advertising about what a great place this is to live and marketing to our own residents, I imagine, with the idea of retention. Would that probably sort of capture that and then replace it, so that you would have one single entity doing this sort of thing? Is that the intent?
MR. MORLEY: That is kind of the broad intent, to draw in all of the folks who are spending some kind of marketing dollars in the area and even draw the Nova Scotia Brand into this process as well, to try to get a comprehensive approach going within the community. Some of this has already begun to happen, by serendipity. The port talks, for example, about "Smart Port", Halifax talks about "Smart City". So there are a number of things that are happening by serendipity on this.
[10:30 a.m.]
I should say going forward, one of the things that comes to mind is a theme going forward that seems to resonate with everyone, in terms of branding and so on, is kind of a youth theme thing, recognizing that we want to retain and attract youth to our community and to our province. That theme is an incredibly powerful theme that we should be looking at more deeply. So we don't have it going all the way yet, but we have some ideas of the direction we should take.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Well, I certainly like the title of it, the Quality of Place Council. It sounds like a good thing to be working on. I would like to see it move forward.
The youth theme would seem sensible. I noticed that HRM has a much younger population than our province as a whole. Certainly with creative cities, you look at the creative index to attract more young people to stay. I'm surprised there's no wish list for the government though, because every single one of these initiatives have a provincial government aspect. The immigration, for example, there are things you would like to see the province do, perhaps, that would support what you are doing to create a place for immigrants and a welcoming community and that sort of thing.
You might want to respond. There are so many things, whether it's transportation, immigration, just fueling the economy - our tax system, there are so many things. So maybe you want to reply again.
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MR. DONOVAN: Yes, just because you raised it again, Madam Chairman, the strategy is based on sort of two things, the way I see it anyway. One is partnerships and recognizing that you can't go it alone and that we all need to work together. The second part of it is, the implementation was really based on using existing structures and organizations and budgets for that matter, to carry it out. Until we kind of exhaust - I always see money and the asking for increased funding as sort of a last resort. If you follow through on your intentions and you do the best you can but you still come short, then maybe the money is more important. I think, really, the strategy focuses on just doing things that we currently do a little bit better, and in better consultation with each other.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I appreciate that, it's not all about money, there are other things that we can work on. One of the other areas I had circled here on your Vision plan was the business development tool kit. My question there would be, was that identified in your consultation as missing? Do businesses in Nova Scotia not know how to go about the regulatory hoops and the necessary steps, and, therefore, would that not be something that the provincial government, as well, could be looking at?
MR. MORLEY: That's something that, in sitting down with 1,100 CEOs over the last two years in Halifax, we've identified. A lot of businesses have problems they leave up on the shelf, that they don't know how to deal with because they don't know who to call, they don't know the proper department, don't know the proper person to call, that kind of thing. That's where that came from. This business retention and expansion project that has been done in Halifax, and is now being rolled out across the province, puts account executives in to try to do that, to solve those business problems, to steer them to the right organizations that can help them with their issues. We thought that a business tool kit would be additional assistance to companies.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: That explains where it comes from. I do think that would be something the province could have that would be province-wide and would help. I notice as well that, I think it's Page 31 in here, you talk about an action that you're looking at, No. 4 in the blue section, it says, "Work with the Government of Nova Scotia to recognize HRM as a main economic driver . . .", and the next sentence says, "Implement a Provincial Economic Policy that commits resources to . . .", and there are several points.
Was it an impediment that there is not a provincial economic strategy in place under which HRM could define itself, rather than going the other way and having our largest municipality define its economic goal and now looking for the province to build around that, or build onto it?
MR. MORLEY: I guess we tried to accommodate that issue by who was engaged in the process. We engaged a lot of the people, as I mentioned earlier, who were actually
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involved in writing the provincial strategy. We said, we know you're really busy writing the provincial strategy but we need a little bit of your time to work with us on ours. By doing that, we feel we have some complementary ideas and complementary thinking going on. To be truthful, we work pretty hard to get a higher profile for urban issues in Halifax, within the provincial strategy. I think some of it is certainly in there. So we pushed on that account quite hard.
I guess we're falling back on the team that we put together initially as advisers and as a working group to get the strategy done. We've kind of seated some people out there who will help us implement.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: So you felt there was good representation on that original committee?
MR. MORLEY: Yes.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I wanted to ask you about the term "social infrastructure". What do you mean by social infrastructure? Could you briefly - I'll have some questions about it once we know what it is. In several places in there, you talk about wanting to improve social infrastructure. Are we talking recreation, culture?
MR. MORLEY: Could I just go back and deal with a previous question that I don't think we answered completely, on which areas the province should be active on. Within that business plan, the responsibilities of various departments of government, provincially and federally, for that matter, and various other organizations out there, again, in the working plan of the document are fairly clearly articulated. The people within those departments and agencies know who they are and know their responsibilities. What we haven't done so far is bring them all together.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Is this the working plan?
MR. MORLEY: Yes. What we haven't done is bring them all together and asked for that progress report, which is what the chamber is embarked on right now. In terms of the social infrastructure issue, what's meant by that - and we had a lot of debate around that in the advisory committee - is there are a lot of investments that we need to make as a community, both in terms of capital and in terms of investments on the social side. Social capital talks largely about some of the structures that we need to invest in, things like the seawall, for example, things like public art, things like . . .
MR. DONOVAN: The library.
MR. MORLEY: . . . the library, these kinds of things. So these are very real, tangible investments.
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MADAM CHAIRMAN: Do you include recreation in that?
MR. MORLEY: Absolutely, yes, recreation facilities and these kinds of things. That's what's meant by that. We felt, the advisory committee did, that there was an under-investment in this kind of thing in HRM, and we needed to right the ship on that one.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: On the investment side, when you're urging companies to come here - and I know the Greater Halifax Partnership deals a lot with the attraction of business - how important are those factors for companies relocating? Is there a measure? Have you taken a measure or a poll or even anecdotally, could you tell us how we fare? My impression is, we wouldn't fare very well if they were measuring those facilities. I look at Port Hawkesbury and their wonderful, new, big recreation centre they built, and they say it's a huge impetus for attracting doctors to the community, and others. I think people from the rural areas would appreciate that, too, that it adds a great deal. I think our city needs it, too. I'm wondering if you could comment on just how big our issue is there.
MR. MORLEY: I think it's an issue, the social infrastructure issue is becoming incredibly important. It's not directly important - it isn't a top issue that companies locating here look at. The top issue that companies look at is, can I get the labour force and can I get smart people, can I get creative people? So they look at places, try to find places that can attract and retain that kind of profile. They look for places that can hang onto their youth, that are creative communities, that have the social infrastructure that creates that creative community, and so on. So in that sense, it is very important to us.
The biggest single factor lately in attracting companies to our community, without any doubt at all, is our universities. As we know, the universities are incredibly important on their own as economic generators, in Halifax, about $600 million or $700 million a year, just in operations and maintenance expenditures, and great tools in other parts of Nova Scotia as well. I think, aside from that, the single most important factor is they are absolutely great magnets for youth, for people, and what else would you want in your community? I can't imagine anything better than having a magnet in your community for youth. And to make sure we preserve those universities, to keep them growing or at least operating at current levels of enrolment, is incredibly important to Halifax's future and probably the future of the province.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: That's very good. I wanted to ask you a bit about the role of HRM, now that the plan is in place. I know you're working really hard to be collaborative and co-operative and work with existing organizations, but do you have a role to lobby other levels of government, federal and provincial? Are you going to lobby? Do you see that advisory board as lobbying?
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MR. DONOVAN: We haven't taken any predetermined position on that, because I think we would like to have this governance structure up and running and being able to do just that, to speak on behalf of the strategy, what needs to be done, how much it would cost, who needs to come to the table and so on, and report that to the community, including our council. Where formal representation needs to be made, then that's where the role of council would come in. Through a regular reporting between this new structure and our elected representatives, we feel that's probably where the answer lies.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: If I could, just one final question. I hope it will be a brief answer, too. On the Commonwealth Games, the Greater Halifax Partnership, I think, is playing a role in terms of looking at the economics of that proposal. I wonder if you could comment on when the public might get some feedback from that. I think there is a real hunger throughout the province, really - certainly in HRM - to find out more information on which we can feel more comfortable with the whole idea, because there are a lot of people just waiting to get more information.
MR. DONOVAN: Yes, in fact it isn't the partnership necessarily that's behind that. In fact, it's the three levels of government that are ultimately going to be asked to fund the games, who we have taken the approach will remove it from the process itself of vying for the games. That's being done very capably by a bid committee.
We have people like Fred at the table with us when we are reviewing this, but there are actually two aspects of that: one is more of a short term and one is a longer term. One is to look at best practices around the world and regions that have had success in hosting these games, particularly from an economic point of view. Not necessarily guaranteeing how well Canada will make out on the medal podium, but from an economic point of view to see which are the best approaches to be used, and then to actually measure, if you will, the impacts of the games, the economic impacts of the games in quantifiable terms. Then there is a longer term strategy, and that is to engage the business community in maximizing the benefits, to get the best benefit from local businesses on procurement and other activities that relate to the games.
[10:45 a.m.]
In the short term, we hope to have the best practices developed by the end of this month and being able to report those out through council to the community, then the second element relative to the measuring of the impacts in time for the bid package. We wanted to actually be able to get that information out to council by the end of November so that there will be information in the hands of individuals in the community and elected representatives, and particularly those who have to make decisions on funding the games.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: That economic impact, what I had looked at was on, I think, the GHO website, they talked about a $300,000 commitment to doing some
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different studies and the economic impact was at the RFP stage, it said. So will that be done by the end of November?
MR. DONOVAN: Yes, we have the actual consultants engaged now and they are pretty much, I guess you would say, halfway through their work. They have completed the first element of best practices and they're working on the next piece.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I appreciate that.
MR. MORLEY: Just to add to that, and why I guess you're referencing the partnership. It's a good example of how we intend to implement the strategy generally, I guess, is that we developed kind of an outline of what needed to be done going forward for our community. We needed to have an economic impact analysis done; we needed a communications plan; we needed an industrial benefits approach and a business engagement approach. So we fleshed that out, developed a broad proposal around that. Other organizations are now kind of leading various elements of that.
We can put some ideas on the table, but we don't have to lead every single initiative related to economic development. We recognize that and that's part of the partnership that we'll be using to carry things forward. So in this case HRM is kind of leading the economic impact analysis portion in conjunction with other partners. It doesn't matter how things happen, it just matters that they happen.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Right, thank you. I wonder if you would like to have more questions, Howard, just to finish up. I'm looking at five minutes.
MR. EPSTEIN: We have limited time so let me just direct your attention to one major concern I had with the document, and it had to do with the general omission of a focus on poverty. There certainly are a couple of passing references to it, but something peculiar happens. On Page 13, there's a statement that says, "While the quality of housing, particularly executive housing is good, the poor and the elderly face problems with accessibility." A perfectly good statement. Page 17, under Labour Market, it says that one action is, "Engage business directly in poverty reduction initiatives. Support programming for disadvantaged groups with challenges finding jobs." Again, perfectly good points, both of them.
Yet, when you come to the summary of the document and the list in the fold-out sheet of what happens, the whole focus here has shifted and narrowed, really, to the housing side of it, and it seems to be tucked into the post-secondary education category of things, so it seems to imply that the focus here is on helping poor students find housing. That's fine, and there's certainly some pressure on students to find housing if they're going to be attending the universities that we have here, but that's hardly what I think the lead-up seemed to suggest, and, really, I think it gets short shrift here.
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If there's going to be an economic development strategy, certainly those groups that are marginalized in society, those groups that tend to be excluded from the mainstream of the benefits of economic life have to be targeted, and heaven knows we're finding, as all cities do, a growing group of young people, and people of other ages as well, that are obviously left out of the economic system and that need to be targeted. That's really one thing I had hoped you would spend more time on.
I have a question. On Page 21, I'm completely baffled by the following statements, it's on the section called Leverage Our Creative Community, and it has to do with something called HRM's Urban Heart. The first item there says, "Establish new and enhanced maintenance initiatives and standards with a focus on year-round, 24/7 accessibility. Engage through a public/private approach that emphasizes individual and business responsibility and stewardship." Jim, I haven't the remotest idea of what's being said here. I'm just completely baffled as to what it is that's being talked about.
MR. DONOVAN: I guess when I first came to this file, I looked at that, too. There's a lot there, actually. I think what has happened there is it tried to capture it all in a sentence, but it relates to things like building safety, aesthetics, attractiveness, and making people feel welcome, particularly in downtown commercial areas, and to try to engage business in maybe taking a bit more pride in ownership of their properties, and to actually help, maybe work with business improvement districts in those kinds of initiatives.
The 24/7 means trying to just have police and eyes on the street, and maybe people living in the areas where there are eyes on the street to enhance safety. Maybe Fred can answer in a little bit more detail than I did.
MR. MORLEY: I guess it also refers to the idea that in real creative communities there is a 24/7 presence in those communities. I think all of us understand that you don't want a downtown Houston in Halifax, or downtown Dallas where the whole thing clears out and moves to the suburbs after five o'clock at night, that sort of thing. That's just a reflection on how we can find ways to ensure that we have a vibrant heart in our community.
The other issue, in terms of the non-traditional labour force and getting at that issue, it's something that, again, it wasn't perhaps dealt with clearly enough in there, but it's something we've already begun working on. Actually in two weeks, in 10 days, we're sitting with probably 20 businesses to talk about issues of corporate social responsibility, how do we engage them in working with a non-traditional labour force, working with disadvantaged groups and so on, recognizing that we've got to bring these folks into the mainstream, not necessarily just because of the social implications but because we can't waste any labour force in Halifax, we can't leave people sitting on the shelf when they
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could be employed productively. So business is increasingly seeing this as a win-win sort of opportunity. So that's where we're going with that.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Are there any final questions from the PC caucus? Just five minutes, if you could.
MR. MUIR: It's not really a question, just a comment. Thanks for coming in, I found this very interesting. Good luck with your 90-odd tasks. Halifax is a pretty good example of how to get things done.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Perhaps you would like to have just a few minutes for some closing comments to the committee, if you'd like.
MR. DONOVAN: We didn't prepare any.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: You don't have to, but you're welcome to.
MR. DONOVAN: Fred always has something - he has the gift of gab. He has been in the economic development business longer than I have.
MR. MORLEY: Gee, what a mistake - is there anything you'd like to say? Well, just very simply, this strategy is designed to have a lot of partners in implementation and when I say some of those partners are around this table, I really mean it. The issues that you have brought collectively to the table today that aren't addressed in the strategy, well, there you go, there's something to start working on right away. Again, the strategy is not entirely my responsibility, not entirely Jim's, not entirely the City of Halifax or HRM, it's a collective responsibility that extends, I think, province-wide, and that's how we'll make it work.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Well, I thank you very much for coming in today, it has been very helpful to us, I think, to frame some of our economic issues. You're certainly welcome to leave, we're going to attend to just a little bit of business, as a committee, so it's good that we have six minutes to do it.
What I have on our agenda for the committee business is the nomination of a vice-chairman. I'm going to ask that we postpone that to the next meeting, which will probably be in a couple of weeks because we're going to look at having a special meeting. The second item there is discussion of an emergency meeting regarding the CAP program. Mr. Epstein.
MR. EPSTEIN: I wrote to the committee raising this topic and it seems clear that it has a big impact on a large part of the province. I hope if we get agreement amongst the committee, we can schedule it. If we do move to that point, I have two suggestions
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as to possibilities. One is that we take the meeting scheduled for November 14th and use that for the CAP sites. I see that at this point we don't have any witnesses lined up; I take it that's what's meant by tentative. In some ways that's my fault, because I haven't spoken to the clerk of the committee yet about suggesting witnesses since this was one of our topics. So one is we could simply take that and move the Electricity Marketplace Governance Committee a couple of weeks into the future, that's maybe to November 28th,, if that's available, and it would be a way to accommodate the CAP. That's my preferred way of dealing with it.
The other possibility would be to leave November 14th in place for electricity and do CAP on November 28th, but I would prefer the former. So we have two things to look at; one is are we going to look at CAP and the other is, if so, when can we schedule it?
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I would just mention that Darlene had found an opening in the schedule for meetings on October 24th, if we wanted to go sooner, and that would be somewhat based on the committee's wishes - I mean this is an important item - if we feel it's more of an emergency or whether we are happy to wait until November. It is a Tuesday, the 24th of October. Maybe while we're looking at that we could hear from Mr. Bain.
MR. BAIN: Madam Chairman, if I could, I agree with the member opposite that November 14th is a tentative date and we can certainly schedule the CAP discussion at that time, I think we would be in agreement with that. A lot of us, as you can appreciate, have committee after committee after committee.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I do appreciate that. If the members are comfortable, I mean going to November 14th would probably be easier for managing it since it's not finalized yet on our other. We will be sitting during November, I don't know if we want to meet again on the 24th (Interruption) Oh, you said the 28th, I'm sorry.
MRS. DARLENE HENRY (Legislative Committee Clerk): November 28th is Human Resources.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: And Human Resources meets that day so it will conflict.
MR. EPSTEIN: Does it meet from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. as well?
MRS. HENRY: Yes.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: So it might mean that the electricity gets pushed off into the new year even.
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MR. EPSTEIN: Well all right, I'd like to do the CAP and if November 14th is agreeable to the other members, then why don't we do that and since I have a little work to do about potential witnesses, I may get back to the committee about their availability that may govern a suggestion about when we might look to reschedule the electricity item.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: That's good. So the motion would be that we change the witnesses for November 14th and look at the CAP program at that time.
Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
Sorry, one question from Darlene.
MRS. HENRY: In this letter, on Page 2, are these the same people you still want in, CAP Nova Scotia, Library Association, and representatives from the various CAP sites?
MR. EPSTEIN: That's certainly our suggestion.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: That's fine. I think that would be a good representation of groups. So with that in place, our next meeting is Tuesday, November 14th. We can deal, at that time, with nominating the vice-chairman right away.
We're adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 10:58 a.m.]
