ECONOMIC SUMMIT
Hamilton and Burlington leaders say they can land government funding by working together
A joint Hamilton-Burlington effort to tackle climate change issues in the bay area is being promoted by mayors Fred Eisenberger and Rick Goldring.
They will ask their councils to back creation of a Community Climate Change Action Plan Implementation Team.
The initiative, which goes to Hamilton council Wednesday evening and Burlington council in July, is designed to capture a share of $2.3 billion being made available by the federal and provincial governments for such efforts.
The new effort was unveiled Tuesday at the Bay Area Economic Summit as another example of growing co-operation between the longtime neighbours.
In an interview after the summit, Eisenberger and Goldring said the new initiative extends co-operation that has been growing between the cities for years. It will be modelled on the Bay Area Restoration Council that has worked on the Randle Reef toxic clean up project and other environmental efforts.
“Our thought is we can model that to deal with climate change issues along with the province and the federal government. They’ve got funding on the table right now, $325 million from the province for climate change initiatives and a couple of billion on the federal side,” Eisenberger said. “We’re thinking that an organized joint effort will certainly put us right at the head of the line for some funding.”
Goldring said his city has already set some “lofty” climate change targets, and working with Hamilton directly will help to push them ahead.
“We can work on these together and compare notes,” he said. “I think the model of the Bay Area Restoration project is one we can use because it has worked so well for Randle Reef.”
In addition to water and sewer pipe upgrades and flood plain work, transit projects will be high on the new team’s to-do list.
Transit issues were near the heart of the daylong economic summit at the Royal Botanical Gardens, the second event to unite Hamilton and Burlington.
Goldring noted, for example, a person can drive between the city halls of Hamilton and Burlington in about 20 minutes — but the same trip by public transit takes an hour and requires two bus routes.
Overcoming issues like that, the audience was told, will make a real contribution to the economic development of the area.
Richard Joy, executive director of the Urban Land Institute, told one session of the event that transportation delays cost the economy $13 billion a year “because of our epic gridlock.”
Strong provincial action, he said, will be needed to get past that issue.
Burlington planning director May Lou Tanner said one initiative on her side of the bay that paid dividends in cars taken off the road was to redesign municipal transit routes so they better lined up with GO train departures.
Higher density development packing more people into highrise buildings and smaller houses will also help to turn the focus of residents away from cars and toward transit options.
The 350 business leaders attending the event were also told another major driver of local economic development is the increasing importance of “Big Data” — the ability to use information to drive changes.
Healthcare is a field where that impact is already felt as access to data speeds up the development of new cancer treatments and allows hospital leaders to make better use of their resources.
That’s important for Hamilton because health care now employs more local residents than manufacturing and Hamilton Health Sciences is the largest single employer in the region.
HHS president Rob MacIsaac said the kind of data being gathered from patients of his hospitals is making it possible to target issues such as increased use of emergency departments for basic health care. That reduces the costs of the operations and frees resources for other initiatives such as poverty reduction.
Heather Chalmers, general manager of health care for GE Canada, told the audience capturing the efficiency possible through a better understanding of data will change the nature of work.
“The future of work is changing and Big Data is at its heart,” she said.
One example of the economic benefit of better data use is the new health technology centre being established in Hamilton by IBM Canada in the former Stelco Tower.
IBM Canada president Dino Trevisani, said that project is just one example of how public-private partnerships can drive real economic change.
In other presentations Central 1 Credit Union chief economist Helmut Pastrick predicted no major hikes in Canadian interest rates until late next year or even 2018. He called for an exchange rate in the range of 80 cents US “over the next couple of years” and said unemployment in Hamilton will continue in the five per cent range through this year. Employment growth will restart next year but remain in the range of one per cent.