Remarks at Clarington Board of Trade virtual meeting

On October 9, 2020, Regional Chair and CEO John Henry spoke at a Clarington Board of Trade virtual meeting

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Good morning.

I appreciate the opportunity to provide you with an update from the Region today.

It’s also a great time to hear from you and hopefully address any questions you may have.

Today I want to discuss with you what the Region has accomplished during this pandemic from an Economic Development perspective, how we are getting back to business, and what our vision of recovery looks like.

As of today, we are nearing seven months since I declared a state of emergency in Durham Region.

It was first time the Region has ever declared a state of emergency.

Like many Clarington businesses, our Regional team had to quickly modernize the way we do business.

More than 1,300 staff quickly shifted to teleworking to keep key services and projects moving forward. We were, and are, committed to keeping Durham’s economic engine running.

Early in the pandemic, we quickly formed The Durham Economic Task Force–a collaborative response team made up of Durham Region’s Economic Development and Tourism team; the Business Advisory Centre Durham; local municipal economic development teams; our BIAs, chambers of commerce and all of Durham’s boards of trade—like you fine folks here today with the Clarington Board of Trade.

The Durham Economic Task Force meets regularly to develop and deploy initiatives, such as surveying businesses for their needs, developing programs to meet those needs, advocate on their behalf to other levels of government, developing plans and strategies to support businesses through recovery, communicating key information for businesses in Durham Region from a central website, supporting local business campaigns, and more.

We worked with all Durham BIAs to develop the Downtowns of Durham website and campaign to support the businesses in Durham Region’s vibrant downtown areas that were hit especially hard.

We continued our strong partnership and collaboration with Durham Farm Fresh and agricultural businesses—many of which are located in Clarington—to support their digital transformation, safe opening, and other needs.

Through Durham Tourism we have been promoting the value of local restaurants.

The key message that “you are not alone” through video and other initiatives.

We even hosted a Virtual Canada Day celebration. We also filmed the second ever episode of our new Regional podcast on location at Star Apples restaurant in downtown Bowmanville to further support and promote our vibrant downtown businesses.

And further support for our local restaurants and food services in Durham was recently announced through Ritual ONE—an accessible, online method of contactless food ordering.

This service allows local restaurants and food-based businesses, in need of a digital ordering solution, to provide customers with a method of placing orders for dine-in, or contactless pickup or delivery.

We have also developed local PPE supplier, food, and e-commerce company directories—all in an effort to support local business.

And all of this was just the beginning.

We have been working on even more initiatives to continue getting Durham back to business.

We continue to promote programs to help businesses digitally transform, such as Digital Main Street and Digital Durham.

These programs provide additional support for businesses in Durham Region to expand their digital presence, adopt innovative tools, explore new training opportunities, and so much more.

We are continuing to promote Durham Region as a good place to invest and continued focus on job creation.

A great success story of this coming to fruition is the announcement in September from Amazon.

They have committed to building a one million-square-foot distribution facility with 1,000 new jobs in the Town of Ajax and a 354,000-square-foot facility in the Town of Whitby, with hundreds of full and part-time jobs.

These are both solid investments in our region.

But most importantly, this announcement is a direct reflection of the collaboration that exists between Durham Region’s economic development team, those within the local area municipalities and other important business partners like you.

Together, we are showcasing why Durham Region is the best place to live, work, grow and invest.

We are continuing to advocate for investment in the region, which has seen recent success with the significant $83 million joint investment announced by the federal and provincial governments last month, in partnership with our own municipal investment of $43.2 million towards significant Durham Region Transit improvements.

From this funding, 11 major projects, including Bus Rapid Transit, are being undertaken.

These projects will all have a tremendous benefit to DRT and to the residents and businesses of Durham.

The Region is also continuing to support local businesses as they navigate the COVID crisis—always seeking new opportunities for programs and platforms that can better support local business.

While all of this ongoing support is crucial to keeping Durham’s economic engine running, it’s equally important to be planning for our eventual road to recovery, to ensure that we come out of this stronger than ever.

Back in June, Durham Regional Council and I approved two very important reports—possibly two of the most important reports that have come across my desk since becoming Regional Chair.

The first was our new Durham Region Strategic Plan.

As a corporation, the Region strives to be an innovative, sustainable, future-oriented organization. This plan lays out our priorities and sets achievable goals for the short and longer term.

This plan reflects the desire to capitalize on Durham’s legacy as builders and economic drivers going forward.

Our new economy will be one that features autonomous and electric vehicles, nuclear energy, AI and personalized medicine.

It also underlines the Region’s commitment to land-use planning—creating more greenspace and supporting our rural communities.

Our strategic plan was largely consulted on, and put together, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

We now know that COVID-19 will continue to impact us for many more months, even years.

So, every decision we make will require a COVID lens.

But as you know, our priorities haven’t changed; their importance has only been amplified.

Priorities such as the importance of environmental sustainability and agriculture; social housing; and supporting our local businesses to foster continued economic success for our great region.

This mindset helped develop the second report we approved at Council—the Region’s Recovery Framework.

I’d like to take some time to share this with you today, as I know economic recovery is what’s on everyone’s mind.

And no one is more eager than me to get our economy back up and running.

Our Regional Recovery Framework is centered on four pillars: Social, Built, Economic and Municipal.

I would like to focus on the Economic pillar today, but first I will briefly touch on the others.

The SOCIAL pillar is all about taking care of our people, including priorities such as the health and safety of residents during COVID-19, housing and taking care of our vulnerable residents.

One such example of this priority in action is the installation of WiFi in homeless shelters thanks to a donation from COVID-19 Community Response Fund for Vulnerable Populations.

Other priorities include the safe operation of our child care centres, a primary care outreach program for COVID-19 testing and managing COVID-19 outbreaks.

The BUILT ENVIRONMENT pillar, focuses on our objectives for transformative projects and environmental sustainability.

This includes changing how we build and design facilities, housing and services.

We are also looking for ways to build back better, with a focus on environmental impact in everything we do.

This also includes the recovery of Durham Region Transit ridership, including in the north.

The MUNICIPAL pillar considers the major financial and operational hit local governments have taken and our plan to get our own house back in order.

The fiscal impact of COVID-19 as of September was approximately $40.5 million—something that we have communicated to both the provincial and federal governments.

We were very pleased with the $23 million in relief funding provided in August.

Regional staff have demonstrated some amazing work, resiliency and adaptability to change during the pandemic.

As an organization, we have been applying lessons learned from the pandemic to modernize our services—such as the further development of myDurham 311—a service for Durham to modernize how we do business.

myDurham 311 aims to modernize the customer experience by consolidating our call centres into one contact centre experience, that includes more online functionality and ensures a faster and more efficient experience.

myDurham311 is just another example of our organization striving for innovation and modernization in all of our practices.

Finally, the ECONOMIC RECOVERY pillar spells out specific actions the Region is taking to ensure our local economy not only recovers, but comes out of this stronger than ever.

As I mentioned, our Durham Economic Task Force is providing direct one-on-one support to help businesses find the resources they need.

We are supporting local businesses in resuming operations to get our economic engine back up and running.

We are prioritizing the improvement of vital business infrastructure, such as broadband internet, especially for rural communities—a priority for Clarington.

We are constantly looking at opportunities for partnerships, and continued investment and funding from partners such as the provincial and federal governments.

We are promoting current and new post-secondary programming to “upskill” and retrain the current workforce to ensure a more adaptable and resilient economy.

We continue to promote Durham Region’s position as the Clean Energy Capital of Canada with the goal of attracting more jobs in the energy sector.

We are also actively highlighting Durham Region’s strong history of innovation to increase awareness of Durham as a good place to do business and attract more jobs.

The Region is also looking for ways to ensure our long-lasting economic vitality, with projects such as the Natural Resources Canada’s Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Action Plan. As we are Canada’s premier nuclear host jurisdiction, the federal government sees our role in SMRs—smaller and more cost-effective nuclear reactors—as key to helping Canada shift to a low carbon economy and achieve GHG emissions targets, while supporting job creation in an emerging industrial subsector. From a regional perspective, SMRs could support the growth of jobs and nuclear expertise in Durham as well as meet Ontario’s electricity needs with a low carbon option to support Canada’s climate change goals.

And finally, we worked with Clarington, Whitby, and Oshawa, to make GO Lakeshore East Extension a reality, after many years of planning.

It’s been more than 30 years since Durham Region first heard about a train extension into Clarington. And almost a decade since an approved environmental assessment confirmed a preferred route north of Highway 401.

These stations will drive economic revitalization in several key areas, while supporting active transportation within our communities. This investment is expected to have a positive economic impact on our communities for the next 50 years.

The GO East project will provide direct access to our local post-secondary campuses. It will also connect to and help strengthen the existing transit hub in downtown Oshawa.

In Clarington, the new stations offer opportunities for transit-oriented development.

It’s the type of development we know people are looking for: walkable, compact, pedestrian-oriented places where people can work and find entertainment.

With everything I’ve mentioned here today, it’s clear that Durham Region has built a well-deserved reputation as an innovative community. We are known for our ability to adapt and solve big problems. We will continue to showcase these strengths, long after this situation is over, while we continue to grow to be the greatest region in Canada.

I’d like to close by saying thank you. I want everyone here to know that the Region understands the importance of the work you do in supporting and fueling our economy.

While the world looks wildly different than it did last spring, our hard work remains unchanged. Thank you for all that you do, thank you for listening, and I’d be pleased to take any questions.