Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I really appreciate having the opportunity to present on behalf of Economic Development Winnipeg.
I have some introductory comments and then I'm certainly looking forward to the Q and A sessions during the period of time that we have around the table this morning.
Economic Development Winnipeg is an arm's-length agency, funded by the City of Winnipeg, the Province of Manitoba, and the private sector. We also access program funding through the invest Canada-community initiatives funds, or ICCI, and through Western Economic Diversification Canada.
We are mandated to deliver economic development and tourism services for the City of Winnipeg, which include business retention and expansion activities; and business attraction, particularly through foreign direct investment, or FDI, activities. We conduct strategic research on the Winnipeg regional economy and the key industry clusters within our market.
Effectively, we are the boots on the ground to bolster Winnipeg's economy through job growth, new investment, and increased visitation.
Leading think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, the McKinsey institute, and the Conference Board of Canada, have all identified the rapidly changing role that city economies are playing in the global economy. Subsequently, it's critically important that strong networks of collaboration exist between economic development agencies and the federal government so that we can align our efforts to reflect government policy direction designed to stimulate economic growth and prosperity across Canada.
However, in many instances, the capacity, at the city level, to advance these policy objectives is limited due to a lack of access to sufficient resources. The legacy of fragmented federal programs to support economic development activities, specifically through regional development agencies, needs to be addressed. Operational and support resources from the federal government to city or regional organizations involved in business retention, expansion, foreign trade, and investment are limited and inconsistent, and they do not let cities take advantage of their individual strengths.
Economic Development Winnipeg is a founding member of the Consider Canada City Alliance, or the CCCA. This alliance is made up of the economic development agencies of Canada's 12 largest metropolitan regions. Collectively, the CCCA members represent 57.3% of Canada's population, produce 63.4% of its GDP, and have accounted for 82.5% of Canada's GDP growth in the last five years.
It's important that the federal government recognize the role that the large cities in Canada play in the national economy.
We applaud the efforts of the federal government and the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development in recognizing the importance of innovation through Canada's innovation agenda, in the cluster and asset mapping initiative, and national cluster mapping portal to support innovation networks and clusters. However, we want to ensure that the economic development agencies, such as ours, are used as a resource and sounding board based on our in-depth knowledge of industry clusters, innovation ecosystems, and the capacity issues within our communities in the area of skilled labour and investment.
Economic development agencies are equipped with programs for the handling of investors through the investment life cycle, business retention, and expansion programs to identify new investment opportunities for existing investors, and soft-landing programs to support new investors. However, neither collectively through the CCCA nor through the individual member organizations do they have access to the financial resources to fully exploit their potential to grow the Canadian economy.
We are the boots on the ground. We believe that federal policy objectives focused on creating greater prosperity for Canadians become more impactful when the economic development agencies representing metropolitan regions have a capacity to support those objectives.
I would like to close my comments by also raising another issue.
Fundamentally, all communities across Canada are struggling to be able to access the right type of data in order to effectively compete with one of our largest market players, the United States.
Recently a report was commissioned by Global Affairs Canada and conducted by the Conference Board of Canada. It identified significant gaps with respect to Statistics Canada being able to put the right information into the marketplace so that an appropriate comparative analysis could take place for companies looking to invest either in the United States or in Canada. Unfortunately, we're losing out on opportunities because we don't have the correct information.
Simply put, I would say that it's critically important to look at Statistics Canada, to look at how information is being collected, and to look at where those gaps presently exist.