“Part of our more recent successes in building our job base” What other cities can learn from Brampton

Like many North American cities, Brampton, Ontario, built its economic base throughout the 20th century on a thriving and growing manufacturing sector. But in the early 2000s, manufacturing across the continent began to decline. As many other cities grappled with crippling job losses, Brampton was able to avoid sliding into a similar slump, showing resilience in its ability to diversify its business sectors and broaden the job base. Leaders and planners understood what modern industry was looking for, and put the city’s best attributes to work. “Part of our more recent successes in building our job base has come from taking advantage of what we have in the city – a young, diverse and educated workforce, strong infrastructure and robust emerging technology sectors,” said Councillor Jeff Bowman, Chair of the Economic Development Committee at the City of Brampton. Cassandra Baccardax is a Senior Advisor International Investment, Economic Development and Tourism at Brampton. “While we’ve been successful in building other emerging sectors, Brampton has always been able to maintain strong manufacturing over the years, and in fact has built up a niche in Advanced Manufacturing,” said Baccardax. “However, building Brampton’s economy to what it is today was really done by identifying what works for the city and how can we use our advantages to make us even stronger.” Brampton, the ninth largest city in Canada, has grown its business base tremendously over the past few years and now includes more than 8,700 businesses. Brampton is also home to some of the country’s top advanced manufacturing organizations including FCA Automobiles, ABB Inc., MDA Space Missions and Brican Automated Systems. According to Baccardax, Brampton is successful in attracting and retaining top businesses because it focuses on the important elements that matter to those companies. “By strategically positioning the city with a selection of strong competitive attributes, we were able to diversify and push our job base to one that is more forward looking, making our economy much more resilient,” she said. Some of these competitive attributes include: · Location: Brampton is close to major transportation hubs (air, rail and highway), large cities and the United States, providing easy access to more than 450 million North American consumers.