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Economic wonder
As predictable as the quilt of dandelions covering park lawns after a May rainshower, the first significant thrust of visitors on the County on Victoria Day weekend invariably triggers the grumbling about the value of tourism. Accustomed to getting in and out of Tim Hortons while their tea is still piping hot, a trip through Picton can now take up to seven minutes. It can take just as long to find a place to park. Worse, some parking spots are being consumed by walkways around outdoor patios. What good is the tourist economy anyway?
For folks living on pensions, like many on County council, those complaints resonate. All some can see are temporary jobs for young people, increased traffic on roads and infrastructure and more litter to clean up. The short-sighted have difficulty drawing a direct line between the growing power and strength of the County’s economy and their own lives. So, they grumble.
The inclination by council, nudged by grumblers, therefore is to either tax the economy into submission (tolls on bridges/tolls at Sandbanks/hefty taxes on B&Bs) or to investigate again how to diversify the County economy beyond its reliance on tourism and visitors. A springtime ritual as predictable as the yellow buds dotting Shire Hall’s lawn.
What this grumbling overlooks, however, is the fact that very few places get to choose their economy. If they could, a great many would choose Prince Edward’s County’s economic vitality.
But that is not how it works. Businesses develop and grow because of the unique characteristics of the soil, the raw materials that lie underneath it, the geography, proximity to population centres and markets and such. Some economies develop based on a cluster of expertise or talent, like that spilling from a university. Resource economies don’t arise because a local government decides it want oil and gas royalties.
Yet too frequently, seeking to appease the grumblers, County council mindlessly directs its economic development resources to attract industrial and manufacturing jobs that will never come here. In past expressions of this delusion, it has invested barrowsful of taxpayer dollars in industrial parks that only get backfilled by schools, churches, government agencies and even fire halls—but no industry. Few businesses. Certainly, none that would not have established in the County with or without the discounted land. Drive through Picton’s industrial park. Decide for yourself whether it was a good investment of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Unsatisfied, council commissions a study, every few years, to learn how to attract a Honda or Union Carbide or the like to the County. Each study spells out the same conclusion: that the County has no competitive advantages with which to attract the dwindling cohort of manufacturers still making things in Canada.
Brockville is on the 401, on both CN and CP’s main freight line, and very near a bridge to the U.S. Yet this hasn’t protected that community from losing 500 jobs at Black and Decker this month.
Cornwall has all the same competitive attributes— along with hundreds of acres of industrial land—paid for by federal taxpayers. It boasts wide avenues criss-crossing expansive fields of milkweed. Swathes of green punctuated only by heavy power and utility boxes, fire hydrants and lighting poles.
Millions of dollars and buckets of empty promises by politicians committed to returning jobs to Cornwall, has not altered the downward trajectory of this community.
Yet some in Prince Edward County want County council to tinker with the local economy. Perhaps sidle up with Brockville, Cornwall and a thousand other declining mill towns across the U.S. and Canada to pay companies to bring factory jobs to this community.
Others would be happy enough if only we stopped attracting visitors. This view is naively based on the notion that no growth will suit them better. That a quiet little service economy based exclusively on the needs of our aging consumer is more desirable than the throng clogging up Main Street.
What this view fails to recognize and acknowledge is the power and dynamism of the growing County economy and the opportunity it is creating for creative and entrepreneurial young people. They fail to see, for example, that as the winegrowing sector matures it is employing more full-time jobs, spurring the growth of new and existing support businesses. That the rapidly growing craft beer sector will do the same. The food sector too. Burgeoning new opportunities in marketing, processing, distribution and service. A new culinary institute that promises to train 100 new chefs, cooks and food specialists each year.
These are economic opportunities that other communities in rural Ontario can only dream of replicating. The global economy is changing—seeking small, unique and value-added experiences and products. Entrepreneurs in Prince Edward County are seizing this opportunity like few other places in North America. Ours is an amazing economic success story. We only need to recognize it.
If there was any doubt in my mind about the power of this trend, it was erased at the Huff Estates Arena on Saturday. I didn’t know what to expect from Fibrefest. I don’t know yarn from cabbage. But a buddy had texted from Los Gatos in the heart of Silicon Valley in California—wanting to know if we were attending. I expected to see a handful of vendors in a corner of the banquet hall. Knit one, purl two. I wasn’t prepared for the rink floor to be teeming with people eager to talk about fibre—each vendor unique, knowledgeable and specialized. The trade show spilled out into the space behind the arena. Future Fibrefest events will comprise both the arena and the curling rink in subsequent years.
Until that moment, I wasn’t aware of the economic power of this narrow market sector.
Entrepreneurial spirit and achievement is blossoming across Prince Edward County. Like dandelions after the rain. Let us celebrate that.
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