Sarnia Partnership finds blueprint to success
Partnership formed to help existing businesses and attract new ones
You meet the oddest people on the board of directors of the SarniaLambton Economic Partnership.
Like the president of the local labour council.
Raymond Fillion, the former labour council president who was on the board of the economic development organization for almost a decade, used to go to meetings and conferences with colleagues from business.
“Some people thought that was quite strange,” he remembers.
“I look at economic development groups elsewhere, and it’s all business,” says longtime mayor and partnership chair Mike Bradley.
Not in Sarnia and Lambton County, where the president of Lambton College is also on the board. So is a representative from nearby Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation. The partnership is also considering adding members from health care and the arts.
“City hall believes all the wisdom is in city hall,” says Bradley. “Innovation comes from the community, so I try to harness that.”
Besides, he says, “when everyone is on the inside, no one is on the outside throwing stones.”
Sarnia was a one-industry city — petrochemicals — in the late 1990s. Then it lost 7,000 jobs. It thought someone would somehow rescue it.
“Finally,” said Bradley, “it dawned on us. We’re only going to do this if we do it ourselves.”
But politicians, business and labour were all fighting. It was “godawful,” Bradley recalls, everyone beating up everyone else.
So a community meeting was convened. Several hundred people came. It was “pretty rough stuff,” said Bradley, more of the usual finger-pointing.
But a plan emerged that led to the partnership.
And something else dawned on everyone. “We do a lot better when we work together,” Bradley said. “That’s when we started to learn the power of collaboration.”
Too many people still see business and labour as adversaries, partnership general manager George Mallay said.
“Your labour pool is the greatest resource your community can have,” he said.
Said Ted Hext, current labour council president and partnership board member: “We’re part of the structure of business. We’re the workers.”
Labour brings the perspective of the shop floor, he said. It asks different questions, for example, about not only the number of jobs, but the quality of the jobs.
It also sends a clear message to companies considering moving to Sarnia: that everyone is on the same team.
“It shows some semblance of labour peace,” said Fillion.
Windsor knows how important that is. Trying to quash our image as union troublemakers is like Sarnia trying to convince people it doesn’t smell.
Labour’s commitment shouldn’t be surprising. Everyone wants jobs, say Hext and Fillion, and everyone wants their children to stay. Lambton College, ranked fourth in Ontario and 11th in Canada for the amount of applied research it does, conducts much of that research at pilot plants at the partnership’s research park, where it also offers business services and places co-op students.
“When you can offer a company a full package, not only land and energy, (but) a college that does training and ... research and development, you can see how that really helps economic development,” said college president Judy Morris. “I can’t tell you enough how important it is for the college to help drive the economy. It’s absolutely critical for the president of the college to be part of the economic development board.”
The college helped local company Feher Machine and Manufacturing develop its composite hosing and improve its production line, reducing production time by almost 30 per cent and improving safety by 50 per cent. And that’s only one of numerous examples.
The partnership, SarniaLambton Chamber of Commerce, labour and college have worked together on strategy, studies, proposals, even deciding who goes to which trade shows.
“The thing is to get a lot of crosspollination,” said Mallay, the partnership general manager.
The partnership is considering adding a board member from health care.
“It’s a massive employer and we have an aging population yet they don’t have a voice at the table,” said Mayor Bradley.
It’s also considering a board member representing the arts. Theatre, a new art gallery, a music and art festival, and a film festival have all helped revitalize the downtown.
“It’s often overlooked in economic development,” Bradley said.
He calls it “economic gardening,” saying, “I’d rather have 10 10-job plants than one 100-job plant. I want to nurture that.”
Windsor and Sarnia have a lot in common — border crossings, industry and an image problem.
“Bring your community together, open it up, see where it wants to go,” said Bradley.
“It means people giving up some of their power,” he warned.
But the upside is “critics begin to fall by the wayside.”