YEAR IN REVIEW
The Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission (CEDC) says 331 local businesses started between June 2021 and June 2022.
“That’s huge,” said Jamie Taylor, who is three months into her new role as chief executive officer of the CEDC. “Through our programs, we touched 250 (of these businesses) with our advisory services.”
The organization’s entrepreneur centre provides financial and entrepreneurial assistance through their provincial and federal-funded programs for local business owners.
Taylor called the organization the economic development arm of the City that operates with its own board of directors.
“We’re arm’s-length,” she said. “Our services are available to everyone in the community. You do not have to be a member and our services are free.”
The CEDC is the place to go for anyone who is starting or growing a business and wants to hire staff, talk about training, investment attraction or immigration and bringing in newcomers.
Taylor says one of the bigger accomplishments in 2022 was attending the strategic planning exercise. She says it was a huge task and done well, making sure they had community stakeholders and citizens involved to hear how to prioritize the efforts of the CEDC in the future.
The rural and northern immigration pilot program has also progressed with around 281 candidates getting recommendations.
“We’re still the leading community of all the pilot communities,” she said. “That number might fluctuate a little bit, but that’s huge. Since the program began in 2019, we’ve brought over 500 skilled workers to Thunder Bay and that has resulted in over 700 newcomers to the area. When you incorporate the families that have come along with them, that’s new taxpayers to Thunder Bay and people to fill jobs supporting all kinds of different sectors.”
The program was also expanded this year with the CEDC now able to service the region.
The CEDC also delivered support for the installation of new charging stations for electric vehicles in Thunder Bay.
As well, Taylor said the cruise ship arrivals raised the morale of the community.
Navigating assistance for Thunder Bay’s businesses hasn’t happened without hurdles. Taylor says they continue to steer through “what this post-pandemic world looks like” and had to take a good look at how they shifted during the pandemic to meet their clients’ needs.
“We had to be flexible in how we offered our programs and creative in how we reached our clients while looking at different ways to market Thunder Bay,” she said. “The hurdle is figuring out what works now.”
When Taylor took on her role with the CEDC this year, it meant a big change for the staff to adapt to new leadership.
“It definitely was a task on its own for the board of directors, but I think we overcame it quite well,” she said.
Looking ahead, Taylor is excited about new “pillars” that they will start in the new year.
“Natural resources is an area where we’re going to need to spend some more time,” she said. “There’s lots of opportunity with mining and forestry and the CEDC is really going to focus on those areas.
“Workforce development continues to be a really hot topic. That’s the number one concern that a lot of companies are coming to us with because they cannot attract the workforce that they need to be able to grow their business, and in some cases sustain their movement; so we’re going to be focusing our efforts in that area too.”
She noted that tourism will definitely remain a priority for them with exciting things happening, particularly with the cruise ship industry.
“We need to continue to focus on our business development and we need to continue to work with our small businesses because they really are the foundation for our community,” she said. “There’s a lot of different projects that we want to undertake. We want to see some development happening in the Pool Six lines, and that’s going to be a priority for us over the next few years.”