The City of Waterloo's Official Plan will be revealed on February 29: http://www.city.waterloo.on.ca/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=1685
Waterloo council approves tax increase of 2.2 per cent
Jeff Outhit, The Record, Feb. 14, 2012
WATERLOO — Waterloo council has hiked city taxes again, this year by 2.2 per cent.
Taxes are increasing largely to pay rising wages and benefits for city employees. The increase, approved 8-0 Monday, adds $25 to the 2012 property taxes of an average home valued at $295,000. This includes a stormwater fee to manage runoff from rain.
Council last froze city taxes in 1997.
“Increases have to happen because everything increases in cost,” Mayor Brenda Halloran said. “We’ve kept it as tight as we could, as lean and mean as possible.”
Politicians have budgeted for an increase of two per cent for employee compensation in 2012. No collective agreements have been finalized. Compensation accounts for 57 per cent of operational spending.
The budget adds 13 full-time jobs to the city payroll. The new salaries are paid by user fees and rates, rather than taxes. Halloran said the city desperately needs more staff, in part to avoid delaying development approvals.
“We’re holding back progress and economic growth in our community,” she said.
Councillors are proud that Waterloo is not borrowing this year, after a past council indebted the city to build the RIM Park recreation complex.
“That’s a really big step in the right direction,” Coun. Scott Witmer said.
“We are on the right path,” Coun. Karen Scian said.
Starting in 2013, council intends to consider budget recommendations from a citizens’ task force. These include: Better public presentation of city finances, a revised tax-setting strategy, a stronger emphasis on efficiency, a review of costly employee pensions, smarter budgeting to ensure proper maintenance and better long-term library planning.
Halloran can’t foresee a city hall that doesn’t increase taxes. “I wish I could say differently, because I’m a taxpayer, too,” she said.
City taxes make up one-third of the Waterloo tax bill. Regional government imposes half the taxes and the rest are provincial education taxes. Last year, an average home paid $1,170 in city taxes.
Council plans to hike city taxes 9.1 per cent over its four-year term ending in 2014. The previous council hiked city taxes 12.5 per cent over its term ending in 2010.
Waterloo increased water and sewer fees by more than six per cent this year. This adds $52 to an average water bill (excluding the stormwater fee).
Politicians are hiking rates to repair decaying pipes, safeguard clean water, upgrade sewage treatment and recover water sales lost to conservation.
How the municipalities compare
• In 2012 Waterloo city council hiked its taxes 2.2 per cent.
• Regional council hiked its taxes 2.5 per cent.
• Kitchener city council hiked its taxes 2.4 per cent and its stormwater fee three per cent.
• Cambridge has not finalized its budget.
Same home, different taxes
A new study has found Waterloo residents pay higher property taxes in part because properties are more highly valued. The study found that for 2011:
• A detached Waterloo bungalow is taxed $3,043.
• A detached Kitchener bungalow (same home but valued less) is taxed $2,879.
• A detached Cambridge bungalow (same home but valued less) is taxed $2,883.
We're Number 10!
Jeff Outhit, Record Staff, Feb 8,2012
WATERLOO REGION — After a long chase we have officially passed London to become the 10th largest metropolis in Canada. Barely.
That’s good news for economic promoters. It helps with bragging rights and will raise the community profile as Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo appears more often on top-10 lists compiled for investors and job-seekers.
“David Letterman changed the world forever by introducing the top 10 list,” said Iain Klugman, chief executive of Communitech, a local technology association.
“What’s exciting is that I think this will give us a significant bump as far as the awareness of this community.”
But there’s darker news as well in the first results of the 2011 census, released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.
This community is not growing nearly as fast as it was. The growth rate since 2006 has fallen significantly off the pace of the previous decade. Now it’s pretty much average.
“We’re getting now into more of a steady state,” said Ian McLean, president of the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.
“I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. There’s still people that want to come here.”
According to the census conducted in May, 2011 we now have 2,374 more residents than the urban area of nearby London. A higher profile when you’re competing with cities across the world never hurts.
“I frankly think we’ve been punching above our weight for a long time. So I think this just confirms what we’ve been feeling as a region,” McLean said. “It’s great news. You’re in the top 10. It’s better than being 11th.”
The slower growth rate is more sobering. In the past five years, the urban parts of Waterloo Region (excluding Wilmot and Wellesley) grew 5.7 per cent to reach a population of 477,160, Statistics Canada reports.
In the five previous years, the same urban area grew 8.9 per cent. In the five years before that it grew 8.2 per cent.
That was before the economic downturn hammered Ontario manufacturers, costing good jobs across the province. Statistics Canada reports that Ontario growth has slowed considerably as more immigrants choose other provinces, and as residents leave for other parts of the country.
The number of new residents this community has added in the last five years is smaller than in both previous censuses.
Today we’re no longer growing faster than the nation. We’re growing at about the same pace. You can no longer point to this region and say it’s among the leaders in population growth. It’s average.
New population leaders are cities out west and some in the Maritimes, whose resource and energy-based economies are booming.
Business leaders say they’re not worried. Explosive growth brings stresses while steady growth is easier to manage.
“Slow, steady wins the race,” Klugman said. He expects growth will pick up again over the next five years leading into the 2016 census.
“I think that we’re going to see the community become a destination of choice increasingly, just because of the profile that we have been receiving over the last number of years,” he said.
McLean takes note of the slower growth but is not hearing businesspeople sound the alarm. “Having stable growth is not a bad thing from a community basis,” he said, pointing for example to lesser stress on infrastructure.
“We’ll keep doing all we can to make sure that people still see this as a place to do business and raise their family.”
Ten biggest cities in Canada, 2011
1. Toronto — 5,583,064
2. Montréal — 3,824,221
3. Vancouver — 2,313,328
4. Ottawa-Gatineau — 1,236,324
5. Calgary — 1,214,839
6. Edmonton — 1,159,869
7. Québec — 765,706
8. Winnipeg — 730,018
9. Hamilton — 721,053
10. Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo — 477,160
Note: Population is for CMA (census metropolitan area)
Source: Statistics Canada
Winners of Sustainable Communities Awards unveiled in Ottawa, Ont.
Feb. 8, 2012
Ottawa, Ont. — The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) today unveiled the winners of its 2012 Sustainable Communities Awards, a program recognizing municipal projects across Canada that demonstrate excellence in environmental responsibility. The Awards were announced at a ceremony during FCM’s Sustainable Communities Conference and Trade Show (SCC) in Ottawa, Ont.
“As FCM president, I have had the chance to travel to communities all across Canada, and I can say that this year’s award winners are in great company,” said Berry Vrbanovic, president of FCM and councillor for the City of Kitchener, Ont. “The impressive range of examples of environmental leadership I have seen on the ground shows that municipalities are playing a key role in driving the emerging green economy.’’
FCM’s Green Municipal Fund™ (GMF) is the primary sponsor of the Sustainable Communities Awards. The Government of Canada endowed FCM with $550 million to establish the Fund.
“This year’s award winners make a very strong case for the economic and social viability of sustainability,” added Raymond Louie, chair of the GMF Council, and councillor for the City of Vancouver, B.C. “They show that municipalities are leaders in achieving Canada’s national environmental and economic objectives, and are taking cost-effective actions to deliver real results.”
The winners of the 2012 FCM Sustainable Communities Awards are:
• Brownfields: City of New Westminster, B.C. — Westminster Pier Park
• Buildings: Town of Oakville, Ont. – Green Buildings and Initiatives
• Energy: City of Montréal, Que. — A Space for Life – Energy Efficiency Program
• Energy: Rural Municipality of Ritchot, Man. — Île-des-Chênes Community Centre District Geothermal Project
• Planning: City of Vancouver, B.C. — Greenest City Action Plan
• Planning: Town of Drayton Valley, Alta. — Community Sustainability Plan
• Planning – Neighbourhood: City of Terrebonne, Que. — Côte Terrebonne Master Plan for Sustainable Development (Urbanova)
• Residential development: District of Summerland, B.C. — Zoning Bylaw Review and Update
• Transportation: City of Waterloo, Ont. — Davenport Road Multi-Use Corridor Improvement
• Transportation: City of Sainte-Julie, Que. —Taxi 12-17
• Waste: Columbia Shuswap Regional District, B.C. — Capture and Beneficial Use of Landfill Gas and Leachate at the Salmon Arm Landfill
• Water: City of Cranbrook, B.C. — Wastewater Improvement Project
Videos of each award-winning project are available on the FCM website.
OpenText Q2 revenue up 20 per cent, profit rises to $47.4 million US
WATERLOO – Open Text Corp. beat analyst estimates last quarter as the global software company’s profit rose to $47.4 million US and its revenue increased by 20.2 per cent over the year-earlier period.
Net income at the Waterloo-based company amounted to 81 cents per diluted share in the three-month period ended Dec. 31.
That was up from 64 cents or $37.1 million US a year earlier, the company reported after markets closed Wednesday.
OpenText, which sells software used by major companies around the world to manage their electronic documents, says its revenue for the fiscal second quarter was $321.5 million US, up from $267.5 million US a year earlier.
Its adjusted earnings amounted to $1.39 cents per share, up from $1.22 per share in the second quarter of fiscal 2011.
Analysts were looking for adjusted earnings of US$1.23 per share and about US$312 million of revenue for the three month period, according to estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters.
OpenText shares, which are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, rose seven per cent in after-hours trading following the announcement. They gained $3.88 to $56.50 US.
They ended regular trading in Toronto at $52.66, up $1.84 prior to the earnings report on Wednesday but will likely rise sharply on the TSX when trading resumes.
Mark Barrenechea, 46, who joined the company and became its president and chief executive in January, said he was happy to be based out of Waterloo.
“I look forward to working with the company’s employees, customers and investors to lead OpenText to the next level of success,” Barrenechea said in a statement.
Barrenechea has held senior positions at several major tech companies, including president and CEO of Silicon Graphics Inc. from May 2009 until December 2011, when his OpenText appointment was announced.
He was previously president and CEO of Rackable Systems and, in that capacity, led its acquisition of Silicon Graphics. He has also been chief technology officer for Computer Associates (now called CA Technologies) and senior vice-president for applications development at Oracle Corp., both large U.S. software companies.
OpenText specializes in software products that large organizations use to create, manage and archive electronic documents such as emails. It has recently acquired several companies involved in e-learning and adapted its product line to reflect the rising importance of social media.
The company said revenue from licence sales rose to $89.8 million from $79.2 million. Customer support revenue was $165.4 million, up from $136.7 million and service revenue was $66.4 million, up from $51.6 million.
Former factory to be converted into private recycling centre
By Kevin Swayze, Record staff Wed Feb 1 2012
CAMBRIDGE — Construction is underway to recycle a one-time electric-motor factory into Ontario’s largest private waste recycling centre.
The $30-million project was first suggested a year ago by the Waster Management, the U.S.-based company that occupies the former Fasco Motors building on Conestoga Boulevard. It’s now cleared all city and provincial approvals and renovation is underway.
“We have customers in the area who are seeking this kind of facility, looking for this kind of recycling service provider,” said Wes Muir, company spokesperson.
About 80 jobs will be created when the 126,000-square-foot facility opens this fall and starts taking material from industrial and commercial businesses.
Hiring is expected to start in the spring, for both skilled trades to maintain equipment and day-workers overseeing the material sorting lines. (See http://www.wm.com/careers.)
Waste Management has provincial approval to truck in 550,000 tonnes of waste material a year to the new sorting plant. Material may arrive from Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, along with Michigan and New York. It will eventually operate two shifts, Monday to Saturday.
The permit is wide-ranging to offer maximum flexibility to find new industrial and commercial customers, Muir said.
For now, the new facility won’t take what’s collected in blue boxes in front of homes in Waterloo Region.
Waste Management has the contract to collect residential waste at curbside across the region. The material is trucked to the region’s landfill in Waterloo and recycling depots in Waterloo and Cambridge.
The new recycling centre won’t immediately affect that arrangement, but might in future, said Jon Arsenault, the region’s waste management director.
“Obviously, they’re interested in it,” Arsenault said. “We’ve talked, and certainly they’re in our backyard.”
The region’s waste and recycling collection contract with Waste Management ends in 2016, he said. Before then, the region plans to update its waste management master plan, which will look at having a big, privately owned recycling centre so close.
Waste Management is an indirect competitor to the region in selling recycled material, but Arsenault isn’t concerned.
“We don’t anticipate a huge (budget) impact,” Arsenault said.
“If they were setting up a landfill and charging lower prices, that might be different.”
Converting the empty factory into a recycling centre is a “win-win,” said Janet Babcock, Cambridge planning commissioner.
The rear of the building will be razed and replaced with a higher ceiling, to cover an inside dumping area for trucks. All material will be processed inside, she said.
Traffic studies submitted by Waste Management predict no problems from the extra trucks in the industrial area.
The company is also installing a sidewalk along the front of the building on Conestoga Boulevard, along with on-site storm water management and extensive landscaping
It’s exactly the way city hall wants to see an old factory revived, instead of sitting derelict, Babcock said
Waterloo Named Among Global Network of Age-friendly Cities
Waterloo, ON – Jan. 30, 2012) The City of Waterloo has been named a member of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Network of Age-friendly Cities for its commitment to assessing and improving its age-friendliness.
“Receiving the age-friendly city designation is a great honour for the City of Waterloo,” said Mayor Brenda Halloran. “We are dedicated to ensuring this city is inclusive and accessible for our older residents, while also promoting active ageing. This designation reflects the ongoing work we undertake to achieve this goal.”
Arlene Groh, the chair of the mayor's advisory committee on age-friendly cities, will present council with a certificate from the WHO at tonight’s city council meeting. The committee applied for the designation on the city’s behalf.
To be named a member of the WHO Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities, Waterloo was assessed on its outdoor spaces and buildings, transportation, housing, social participation, respect and social inclusion, civic participation and employment, communication and information, and community support and health services.
Membership in this global network has such advantages for Waterloo as connecting the city to a global network of ageing experts, facilitating collaborative activities and providing guidance on developing and implementing age-friendly approaches, among others.
Four Kitchener streets eyed for traffic calming
By Terry Pender, Record staff Fri Jan 27 2012
KITCHENER — As the city’s street network expands, there are more vehicles pushing demand for — reducing the traffic in residential neighbourhoods.
This year four streets will be studied for possible traffic-calming measures, which is double the previous number completed each year since the program started in 2004.
The numbers collected by the City of Kitchener indicate a love-hate relationship with vehicles. Most people drive one, but a growing list wants fewer cars in their neighbourhoods.
In the past seven years the road network expanded by 14 per cent and fully 42 per cent of the urban area is paved over. At the same time the list of streets where residents want traffic calming has grown to 151 streets.
Traffic calming works, said John McBride, the city’s director of transportation planning, and that increases the demand for it.
“Where we have implemented it there has been a positive result as far as a reduction in speed, volumes and collisions and they have been overwhelmingly supported by the neighbourhood,” McBride said.
Traffic calming involves physical changes to the roadway that force drivers to slow down and discourage other drivers from using the street. Speed humps, speed bumps, extending the curb, removing parking spaces, eliminating a lane, extending curbs into the roadway to stop vehicles from turning into a street and sometimes dead-ending a street, are all used.
It will cost about $200,000 to review the streets this year and then makes changes the roadways.
This year Glasgow Street (between Fischer Hallman Road and Belmont Avenue), Morrison Road (between King Street East and Sims Estate Drive), the neighbourhood bounded by Traynor Avenue, Connaught Avenue, Wilson Avenue and Franklin Street), and Guelph Street (between Weber and Lancaster) will be studied by traffic technicians this year.
“We will collect all kinds of background information on volumes and speeds and collisions,” said McBride.
Public meetings will be held so residents can hear about the options.
“We try to gauge what he residents are willing to accept because it is their neighbourhood,” McBride said.
The physical changes to the street will be done in late 2012 or early 2013.
The biggest demand comes from local streets, which average fewer than 2,000 vehicles a day. There are 83 on that waiting list.
Residents living along minor collector roads, which average 2,000 to 8,000 vehicles a day, have generated a waiting list of 36.
And some people move onto busy streets, known as major collectors averaging 8,000 to 12,000 vehicles a day, and then complain about the traffic. That waiting list has 32 streets.
The city ranks each street based on traffic volumes, average speeds and the number of collisions, among other factors. Only those streets with 30 or more points will be considered a priority.
There are 15 local streets, two minor collectors and 15 major collectors ranked as priorities.
Glasgow Street is a major collector, but it was included on this year’s list after a vocal and organized outcry from residents who live along it. Fire trucks use it and that rules out the use of speed bumps.
People who move into houses along major collectors have to realize those streets are designed to carry lots of vehicles at higher speeds, said Clarence Woudsma, the director of the school of urban planning at the University of Waterloo.
“These streets have a place in the transportation network,” Woudsma said. “You made that choice when you chose to buy that property so you have to be cognizant of that.”
Greenbrook Drive is the only major collector to get traffic calming so far, and the city now admits that was a mistake because the speed bumps force fire trucks to slow right down.
Waterloo Region has Canada’s third strongest economy, survey shows
By Rose Simone, Record staff Thu Jan 19 2012
TORONTO — Waterloo Region seems to have its own version of black gold, according to Benjamin Tal of CIBC World Markets.
A survey released on Thursday by CIBC World Markets shows Waterloo Region had one of the strongest economies in Canada as of the third quarter of 2011.
The region ranked third in CIBC’s Canadian Metropolitan Economic Activity Index, right behind Toronto and Edmonton.
“That is very significant, because you don’t have oil,” said Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC World Markets Inc. “The high-tech sector is your oil.”
Despite everything happening in the larger economy, and even locally with the worries about Research In Motion, economic activity in Waterloo Region showed “very nice momentum,” Tal said.
The survey measured nine macroeconomic variables, ranging from population growth and employment to bankruptcy statistics and housing activity.
Toronto ranked first with a reading of 23.0; Edmonton ranked second with a reading of 20.0 and the Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo census metropolitan area, which encompasses virtually all of Waterloo Region, ranked third with a reading of 18.0.
Halifax and Vancouver came in fourth and fifth place, with readings of 16.8 and 15.5, respectively.
In the Waterloo Region, “we see relatively strong employment momentum; we see the housing and real estate market doing OK; we see many of the jobs being created are relatively high quality jobs and that is very important in terms of income growth, and number of consumer and business bankruptcies is relatively low compared to other cities,” Tal said.
The region actually slipped from its second-place ranking in the previous survey, done in the first quarter last year. However, the third-place showing in the new survey still reflects the region’s economic success. It has reinvented itself and diversified its economic engine “in a very significant way” over the past decade, Tal said.
A region that once relied heavily on simple manufacturing has geared itself toward high-tech, value-added manufacturing and services, he said.
Even with all the gloomy news about RIM, Tal said the survey demonstrates that Waterloo Region “is not a one-company city.” Not only has it diversified its economy generally, but its high-tech sector is also diverse, he added.
That all happens to fit nicely with what’s happening in the larger economy, he said.
“The manufacturing sector in this country is changing. It is moving away from what you might call labour-intensive industries,” Tal said.
Economies that thrive are the ones that gearing themselves to the more sophisticated American and emerging market consumers who want high quality, high-tech and sophisticated goods, and Waterloo Region has done that, Tal said.
“We also see many of the manufacturers there being able to integrate themselves into supply chain opportunities in the United States,” he added.
Toronto’s strong economic momentum is attributed largely to steady growth in population, employment and housing starts.
“For the second time in a row, the city of Toronto emerged as the one to beat, with the city showing the fastest economic momentum as of the third quarter of 2011,” Tal said.
While Toronto did not lead in any one of the sub-measures CIBC uses, the bank says it was a consistently strong performer across most of the nine key macroeconomic variables in the index. That reflects “the growing diversity of the city’s economic engine, the bank said.
The second-place ranking for Edmonton, up from 11th in 2011, reflected the city’s strong labour market with overall employment rising by almost eight per cent year-over-year in the third quarter — the fastest pace among all of Canada’s top cities.
“As well, Edmonton’s population is now rising by a year-over-year rate of 1.7 per cent — well above the national average, while the numbers of consumer and business bankruptcies are among the lowest in the nation,” CIBC said.
Halifax, like Toronto, did not lead the pack in any of the sub-measures, “but it ranked high enough in many categories to achieve the fourth spot in our current ranking (up from eighth).” CIBC said.
“The city enjoyed a relatively healthy population growth while the labour market is performing somewhat above average. The real estate market is well balanced, with housing starts rising by well over 40 per cent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2011.”
Vancouver ranked fifth, “continues to enjoy above average population growth, while the pace of job creation and the level of employment quality are well above the national average.”
CIBC said that while Vancouver’s unemployment rate has been improving recently it is still relatively high and close to the national average, while the pace of real estate activity is starting to slow.”
Among other large metropolitan areas, Ottawa came in sixth at 15.2, Montreal seventh at 14.9, Regina eighth at 13.8, Calgary ninth at 13.1, Quebec City 11th at 11.5 and Winnipeg 12th at 11.1.
rsimone@therecord.com with files from Canadian Press
'Everyone hiring' in Waterloo Region's fast-expanding tech sector
Klugman and others associated with the creative sector will soon have new plans for making this region more attractive to talent from around the world.
Communitech, the association representing the region’s technology companies, is waiting on an $80,000 study on attracting and retaining talent that will be finished in the coming weeks.
“It is absolutely necessary for us to always be thinking about how we make ourselves more competitive,” Klugman says.
“This latest initiative is our next kick at the can about what we need to be doing now,” Klugman says.
Overlap Associates Inc., a Kitchener-based consulting firm interviewed about 75 creative-sector workers and their families about living here.
After the interviews Overlap used a design-based approach perfected by Apple for creating plans to make the area more attractive to people who can easily work in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Boston, Austin or Silicon Valley.
Klugman says there are more than 800 technology companies in the region now and the list expands by an average of five startups each week.
“It is fantastic news,” Klugman says.
It is the fastest-growing sector of the region’s economy and some tech companies — including Google, RIM and Open Text — bring employees to work here on shuttle buses running from Richmond Hill, Toronto and Mississauga.
While the economy as whole is shedding jobs, the unemployment rate in this region, at 6.8 per cent, is below the national average.
“Everyone is hiring,” Klugman says of the technology firms.
Adds Tim Jackson, the head of the Accelerator Centre: “We are definitely trying to attract people.”
Christie Digital, one of the region’s flagship technology companies, has approximately 20 openings. Christie is among the 13 organizations paying for this study.
“It is becoming increasingly more competitive to attract and retain talent due to changing demographics,” Kelly Carnahan, Christie’s manager of recruitment, says in an email.
“Waterloo region competes with some highly attractive cities and regions for talent,” Carnahan says.
For this study creative talent was broadly defined and includes software and hardware engineers, architects, arts, culture, education and designers.
About eight months ago, Marlene Coffey, the City of Waterloo’s head of economic development, initiated what is called the Waterloo Region Creative Talent Study.
Coffey says about six themes emerged from the 75 interviews with creative sector workers and their families at the beginning of the study. All of the people interviewed have lived in this region for less than five years.
“This is original research and the first time we have spoken to talent about what they like and what they don’t like,” Coffey says.
Those themes include:
They like the growth in the region, but not the traffic congestion. They like the intensification of the cities and the cultural development. But there are challenges, such as too many strip malls and discount stores.
Newcomers find it difficult to break into social networks. The community is both open- and closed-minded.
The region as a whole struggles with an identity and newcomers find a lot of smaller communities here instead of a single, large one.
They like the expanding tech sector and say this area is awesome for startups. Some, however, worry that the tech sector is too dependent on RIM.
Students and young families feel the region has lots of recreation available. But young professionals without families and mid-career types feel limited by the activities here.
Some like the ethnic diversity here and others feel there is not enough of that. Many expressed concern about intolerance and racism.
The region caters to young families and students — there are great family events, but no adult events.
Alison de Muy, one of the Overlap consultants working on the study, says the themes were turned into what she calls “opportunity statements.”
For example, one of the themes to emerge from the interviews is that newcomers find it difficult to get into existing social networks for recreation, entertainment and professional development.
That theme was turned into opportunity statements: How might we facilitate newcomers’ connections to existing social networks? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an easy way for people who are new to the community to connect to other people? In what ways could we improve social connections across Waterloo Region?
“I think this is the biggest one because the one thing we have heard consistently is that when you move here it is impenetrable, but once you are in, you are golden,” de Muy says.
Small groups of people brainstormed about the opportunity statements to create possible solutions and plans around each one.
“Instead of a nice report that will end up on shelf and never get read and never get done, this actually takes us to the point where the partners now have actual steps to say: ‘If we actually want to create a place where we are getting the best and brightest from around the globe, how do we do that?’” de Muy said.
Public and private-sector leaders are backing the talent study, indicating it will get some high-profile attention.
The federal government is paying for half the study. Several organizations shared the remainder of the costs, including: the cities of Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge, Canada’s Technology Triangle, Christie Digital, Communitech, the Creative Enterprise Enabling Organization, the Region of Waterloo, RIM, Township of Woolwich, the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and the Workplace Planning Board of Waterloo Wellington and Dufferin.
Canadian cities need a lesson in academic potential
Nick Rokkel; Globe & Mail; September 14, 2011
If you’re a student or a professor at the University of Waterloo, any intellectual property that you create there belongs to you. This unusual policy has helped make Ontario’s Waterloo Region a leading patent generator. It has also sparked local successes such as smart-phone giant Research In Motion Ltd. and software developer OpenText Inc., both university spinoffs.
“They basically have evolved from student days into incredible multinationals,” says John Jung, chief executive officer of Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc., the public-private economic development agency for the Waterloo Region.
Encompassing the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo, the region has long understood the value of close ties between business and academia. Its almost 60,000 full-time students – Waterloo’s two other key schools are Wilfrid Laurier University and polytechnic Conestoga College – are a vital source of talent for local companies.
Through the University of Waterloo’s decades-old co-op system, Canadian and international students apply their knowledge in the real world. The region’s three major postsecondary institutions have representatives on the Technology Triangle board, alongside business leaders. “They’re intimately involved in and integral to the process of making this community grow and succeed,” Mr. Jung says.
When it comes to using educational systems as an economic development tool, Canadian cities and regions lag behind Waterloo and such global centres of innovation as California’s Silicon Valley. To turn things around, they must recognize that quality higher education can give them a competitive advantage.
James Milway, executive director of the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity, a Toronto-based think tank, believes his hometown could build stronger links to its universities. With the possible exception of Waterloo, he argues, Canadian companies and cities overlook higher learning.
“We could raise our performance, but it requires business leaders to value education more than they do now,” says Mr. Milway. “It requires our civic leaders to realize that their local universities and colleges are great assets, and to work in partnership with them.”
Besides the United Kingdom, not many places can touch North America in integrating postsecondary education with business, Mr. Milway says. For him, two outstanding U.S. examples are Silicon Valley and Massachusetts’ Route 128.
Silicon Valley’s cluster of research and teaching universities includes Stanford University, while Route 128 is home to the likes of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Some great technology comes out of those schools,” Mr. Milway says, noting that Silicon Valley in particular draws many talented immigrants. “Then you’ve got venture capitalists who are sniffing around to find where [they] can invest. And the thing just gets going – it becomes almost a perpetual motion machine.”
One of the Waterloo Region’s strengths is its high volume of patents. In 2006, for example, applicants based there received 302 patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The region yielded 631 patents per million people that year, almost 4.5 times the Canadian rate of 148. By the same measure, Waterloo also rivalled California (725) and Massachusetts (682).
But in their enthusiasm for patents from universities, cities may forget that keeping graduates around is just as important. Mr. Milway encourages economic developers to work with universities to attract the best and the brightest – and then convince them to stay in the community. “Those students will be more productive and innovative wherever they work,” he says. “And if they’re working in our city, that’s more power to us.”
As other parts of the world get smarter about education, there’s no room for complacency. John Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that Canada and the U.S. have enjoyed an educational advantage because they innovated early.
But in recent years, nations such as Qatar and Singapore have built education hubs by partnering with prestigious foreign universities. Although it’s too early to tell how successful their efforts will be, these countries are taking a strategic approach to postsecondary education that has no North American equivalent, Dr. Douglass explains. “They see it as a key component for developing the right kind of environment to both attract talent and retain it.”
Ignoring these developments is foolish. “We have to be really smart and not just sit on our laurels,” Dr. Douglass says. “[We] need to think internationally.”
Inspired by Silicon Valley, the Global Schoolhouse in Singapore is one example of “a larger worldwide effort by nation states to increase the quality of their schools and the quality and capacity of their higher education systems,” according to Dr. Douglass. Since it launched in 2002, this ambitious public-private venture has attracted outposts of big-name foreign schools such as France's INSEAD and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. It aims to have 150,000 international students by 2015.
A government-funded site in the Qatari capital of Doha, Education City houses branch campuses of several top foreign universities that offer degrees in fields from business and engineering to medicine and journalism.
In Toronto, local business and academic leaders looked at many international models when they conceived the MaRS Discovery District early last decade. Besides housing more than 80 tenants, including startups, multinationals and research labs, this self-described innovation centre advises some 800 young companies in life sciences, IT and other sectors.
Although MaRS is independent of the nearby University of Toronto – which contributed $5 also to grow the companies it starts. “Many of those companies come out of [academia], but many of them are started by entrepreneurs in the community.”
Rather than aspiring to be the next Silicon Valley, cities with universities should play to their strengths, Mr. Milway says. He points to the University of Windsor, whose automotive engineering program provides talent for the region’s car manufacturing industry. “You need to be realistic about what you can do with your local institution,” Mr. Milway advises, “and how you can make it relevant to the industries that you’ve got there.”
Waterloo Region ranks second among Canada's urban economies
Record staff Mon Jul 18 2011
The Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo census metropolitan area trails only Toronto in the latest Canadian Metropolitan Economic Activity Index rankings from CIBC World Markets. The index measures economic momentum.
Waterloo Region ranked fourth in the previous index, the bank said Monday.
The improvement “reflects a very strong labour market, healthy population growth, relatively high quality employment and a low level of business bankruptcies,” the bank said in a news release.
CIBC said Toronto ranked first among the country’s 25 largest urban areas because its economy is firing on multiple cylinders. It said Toronto’s labour and housing markets remain vibrant as a diversity of sectors gain momentum.
Winnipeg, Regina and Montreal followed Waterloo Region in the rankings.
CIBC says overall, the metropolitan index lost some ground compared to the first quarter of last year, but still indicates that city economies are growing at a healthy pace.
With files from The Canadian Press
Waterloo Region on the front line in province's battle against urban sprawl
Terry Pender, Record Staff; Wed. December 1, 2010
WATERLOO REGION — Big changes are coming to this region’s three cities as another 200,000 people are expected to move here during the next 20 years.
Similar growth is predicted for many municipalities in the greater Golden Horseshoe area.
But Waterloo Region will be the testing ground for the Ontario government’s legislated attempt to slow urban sprawl, intensify existing urban areas and enhance public transit.
Without those moves the province fears more traffic jams, lost productivity, increased air pollution and bigger costs for expanded infrastructure will seriously compromise quality of life in the urban areas of the horseshoe.
The Region of Waterloo, quite literally, wrote the legislation the provincial government passed four years ago that aims to curb urban sprawl.
At the front line of the issue is the Region of Waterloo’s new Official Plan, which has established a countryside boundary beyond which no new subdivisions can be built for the next 20 years. In coming weeks the region’s Official Plan will get final approval from the province and then be open to appeals from developers.
If the countryside line withstands appeals to the Ontario Municipal Board, the provincial tribunal that rules on land-use disputes, other municipalities in the horseshoe may establish hard lines over which no suburb can sprawl.
The countryside line surrounds Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. Lines are also etched around Ayr, New Hamburg, St. Agatha, St. Jacobs and Elmira. The region does not want any new residential construction outside these lines.
Kevin Eby, the region’s head of community planning, expects a dozen appeals to the municipal board related to the countryside line.
Douglas Stewart, the president of the Waterloo Region Homebuilders Association, said the development industry does not like the idea of a barrier that permanently prevents the construction of new suburbs.
“Is it the correct decision to say: ‘Forever thou shalt not give consideration?’ I think that’s what it comes back to,” Stewart said.
Stewart said the homebuilders’ association will decide on an appeal only after the province has approved the region’s new Official Plan.
But Stewart made it clear the developers do not even like to hear the word “sprawl.”
“The issue of sprawl in Waterloo Region is questionable,” Wilson said. “What we have had historically is planned growth. What we have is what the policy framework provided for.”
But that policy framework has undergone major changes and is about to be enshrined in the region’s Official Plan.
For much of the past decade, Eby has been at the centre of the changes. For him it comes down to a couple of very different visions for future of the region’s urban neighbourhoods.
If the region and cities take a business-as-usual approach, planners say, the road network will have to be expanded by 500 kilometres of traffic lanes — the equivalent of 25 new Hespeler Roads — at a cost of $1.1 billion, as the region’s population grows to an estimated 729,000 by 2031, up from the current 535,000.
Or, rapid transit can be used to carry people to stations along a central transit corridor that is flanked by high-density housing and walkable neighbourhoods and linking the three cities. Rapid transit would cost $790 million for trains or $585 million for buses. Both approaches still require some new roads, though — about 267 kilometres of traffic lanes at a cost of about $550 million.
Once land costs are taken into account, the two approaches may not be all that different when looking at price tags.
But either way, changes are already happening.
Since 2006 the region has documented the construction of 2,000 residential units and $775 million in non-residential construction within 800 metres of the proposed rapid-transit stations.
Seniors are selling their large suburban homes by the thousands. Many are moving into high-density buildings in central neighbourhoods.
A survey of building permits shows a clear trend: a significant decline in single detached homes in new suburbs and increasing residential construction within existing neighbourhoods.
Eby said without the intensification of neighbourhoods along a central transit corridor, the urban spine of the three cities, many existing residential streets will be disrupted by expanded regional roads snarled with traffic twice a day.
He referred to a map that shows the steady growth of suburbs from 1960 to 2000 in this region. During that period a thick ring of suburbia was built around Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.
“Lot levies and development charges paid for most of the infrastructure to support that suburban growth,” Eby said. “That will all have to be replaced in the next 20 to 40 years on the taxpayers’ tab.”
It is financially prudent to limit sprawl, he said.
After four decades of suburban growth, Waterloo Region now leads the province in meeting targets for reducing the construction of new suburbs on old farms.
In 1991 about five per cent of residential construction in Waterloo Region was infill, building in previously developed areas. In 2001 it was about 15 per cent. Now, between 35 per cent and 45 per cent of new housing occurs in built-up areas.
“It is like turning a really big ship. It does take time. There are thousands of decisions to be made by thousands of people,” Eby said.
The aim is to make better use of expensive investments in roads, sidewalks, sewers, water mains and transit, and to reduce the loss of prime agricultural land to housing.
The region’s growth management strategy of 2003 had three main components — a hard boundary beyond which no new subdivisions would be allowed, intensification of existing neighbourhoods and the central transit corridor.
“People thought we were off the wall, to put it politely,” Eby said. “But we felt if we were going to develop an urban area that didn’t look like Brampton or Mississauga we had to do something very different.”
The provincial government liked the region’s plan so much Eby was seconded to Queen’s Park to help write the provincial legislation that would limit urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
The result was the Places to Grow Act of 2006, which requires municipalities in the Greater Golden Horseshoe to keep 40 per cent of all new residential development within existing neighbourhoods by 2015.
Last year the region was getting very close to that target and in the first half of this year it actually exceeded that goal. In 2009, the region issued 2,769 building permits. About 37 per cent or 1,034 were for residential units in built-up areas. During the first six months of this year, 45 per cent of permits were for residential units in built-up areas.
“We have managed to virtually achieve the type of implementation that most municipalities would be lucky to achieve by 2015 or even 2020,” Eby said.
Rapid transit is one of the key parts of the growth management plan.
Accommodating another 200,000 people by constructing more car-dependent suburbs would require a 25 per cent expansion of the network of regional roads, said Graham Vincent, the region’s director of transportation planning.
“With about 40 per cent of the land in our urban areas already being used for roads and parking, we cannot continue to consume this amount of land and remain sustainable,” Vincent says.
Rapid transit is critical to the region’s growth management plans.
“Are we planning for the people who live in the existing neighbourhoods now or are we planning for the movement of automobiles?” Eby said.
He said all of the pieces of the puzzle are coming together to manage growth in this region.
One of the biggest pieces of that puzzle is a big question mark: will the region’s new Official Plan withstand appeals to the municipal board?
Waterloo Region No. 2 place to invest in Canada: survey
Record staff; Mon. August 9, 2010
Don Campbell, the network’s president, said Waterloo Region finished second behind Calgary in the snapshots of best Canadian cities to invest in between now and 2015. “We looked at what regions will outperform the average over the next five years,” he said in an interview Monday.
The survey by the network, a national organization comprised of real estate investor members, considered a variety of factors, including average household income, population growth and affordability of property, plus factors such as the transportation infrastructure.
The report describes Waterloo Region as the “economic Alberta of Ontario,” in terms of investment potential for residential and commercial real estate, outperforming other cities in the province and in eastern Canada. Hamilton and the Barrie-Orillia area are the two other Ontario locations that made the list of 11 best Canadian places to invest in.
Campbell said a diverse economy and favourable geographic location, along with strong post-secondary institutions, were big factors in why Waterloo Region did so well.
The report also cited the region’s high-tech job growth. The investment in the information technology sector has protected the area from the steep economic downturn that affected other communities, the network’s report said.
The planned light rail transportation system will help to make the region a hot investment location for the future, Campbell said. “That will raise the region up on the world map, because it will be one of the smallest centres with its own regional light rail transportation line. That will be a factor in investment and it will also be a factor in attracting new residents from outside the Waterloo Region.”
Another major factor is the affordability of real estate relative to average household income, he said.
In past years, Waterloo Region has ranked as the best place in Ontario to invest in for real estate. This was the first year the network did rankings for all of Canada, Campbell said.
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