New city hunting for business opportunities.

If you go to them, they will come. This is the maxim that economic leaders in the newly formed City of Temiskaming Shores are intending to put forward as their strategy for success in the future, and so far, it is working.

"It is our intent to let the rest of corporate North America know just who and what we are," says an optimistic John Gauvreau, project officer with the Temiskaming Shores Strategic Economic Development Unit (SEDU), an economic development agency for the region. Temiskaming Shores is an amalgamation of New Liskeard, Haileybury and Dymond Township.

"We have been waiting long enough. Well, guess what? They're not coming," Gauvreau adds.

The EDO and town council are not content to wait for companies to locate in the region any longer, he says. They are actively seeking them out.

According to Gauvreau, the municipality's aggressive policy of presenting Temiskaming Shores as "open for business" has already yielded results. The town was able to convince Canadian-based call centre company, NuComm International, to locate an inbound/outbound customer support and call centre in New Liskeard. The 140-worker facility should hire between 50 to 100 new employees this summer and is expected to grow to 200 to 300 employees by next year.

"They're hiring them as fast as we're sending them," Gauvreau says.

SEDU representatives, he says, have been focusing on approaching companies that are looking into mergers and acquisitions, as well as those thinking of expanding their operations. The intention is to convince them to come to Temiskaming Shores. The main targets are trade fairs. Thus far, the development unit has arranged to send staff in August to meet with business people thinking of expanding in Atlanta, Georgia. By next spring, he says, the region should also be looking at mining trade shows to promote the region.

For Gauvreau, the important outcome of this search is to allow the city to exploit opportunities they have not thought of before, and to embrace the dynamic character of the free market economy.

"We get so comfortable in our day-to-day lives that we resist change; change is a necessary process in economic viability," Gauvreau says.

The most important challenge, however, he says, is developing the region's key strength, forestry, in particular, value-added opportunities. SEDU has already partnered with the Temiskaming Forest Alliance, a forest industry co-operative, in expanding forestry operations.

The community of Haileybury added a new forest products business in mid-June, a success that SEDU would like to expand on. The region has also been visited by Sweden-based furniture giant Ikea, as well as other furniture companies, earlier in the year. SEDU officials admit they have been in extensive contact with Ikea officials since their first visit in search of potential suppliers.

Asked if all these talks with different manufacturers will yield something in the future, Gauvreau says, "within one to two years, we'll have something in place."

Although the community is eager to exploit wood product opportunities, Gauvreau says any new initiative must conform to local wood supply conditions and be environmentally sustainable.

"You have to make sure the forest can yield enough for any project," he says. SEDU says it is also committed to not seeing any new wood producer harm homegrown forest producers.

"We're not going to allow companies locating here to drive up the price of wood chips or drive out an existing company. That's not what we're about," he says.

When they are not chasing companies to locate in Temiskaming, however, the focus shifts to strengthening the agricultural sector. Gauvreau believes the agricultural sector is one of the most important engines of growth for the region.

"We have only one per cent of the agricultural land in Ontario, yet we're producing four per cent of the dairy production in the province. We need to capitalize on this," he says.

SEDU says it has intentions of sending local representatives to agricultural shows in order to showcase Temiskaming as a region to invest in farming and agri-business, including the development of green energy. Gauvreau says the region is looking into developing an initiative to convert cow manure into methane gas using anaerobic digestion (a biological process) as an alternative fuel for the market.

Local politicians have also created opportunities for local agriculture.

The killing of the Kirkland Lake Adams Mine project by Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay, Gauvreau says, has allowed local farmers to consider re-investing and expanding their farms, something they were reluctant to do when they were not sure about the effects of the garbage proposal.

http://www.nucomm.net

http://www.temiskamingshores.ca

BY JOSEPH QUESNEL 

Northern Ontario Business