The City of Toronto wants to start as many as seven new advisory groups, each meant to keep a different type of business owner in touch with city officials over the next four years.
In the past few months, Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly and Michael Thompson, Toronto’s economic development chairperson, have led roundtable meetings of manufacturers, young entrepreneurs, black business professionals, innovation and technology specialists, and others.
Reports on four roundtables were released this week at Thompson’s economic development committee, along with recommendations to create advisory committees Kelly said would be platforms for "considerable actions," and help shape the agenda of the city’s next administration.
Some 228 people attended the forums, and many of them had never visited city hall before, Kelly said.
"If they were aware of us, it was generally as a problem, a challenge they had to deal with."
Still, the deputy mayor said many participants, from successful business owners to entrepreneurs just starting out, shared an "infectious optimism" and a desire to connect with the city and what it offers, he said.
Toronto will need their help as it competes increasingly for business with other parts of the world, said Thompson, a Scarborough councillor who found a positive attitude even in the city’s shrinking manufacturing sector. "The expected doom and gloom wasn’t what we found," said Kelly.
Jocelyn Williams, vice-president of a Scarborough firm, Automatic Coating Limited, which makes equipment for the pipeline industry and U.S. Navy, was part of the manufacturing roundtable and said she thought it was great city officials were interested in what a company like hers needed in order to grow and prosper. "That was refreshing," she said in an interview Tuesday.
A common complaint from the participants, though, was businesses didn’t know what city was doing in areas concerning them, and they wanted to know how to bring concerns to city hall.
The advisory groups - there will be one for the Black Business Professionals Program, another for the Innovation and Technology Program, and so on - will help with that dialogue, and will meet in public where any interested councillor can join them, Kelly said.
The idea was welcomed Tuesday by members of Thompson’s committee.
"Very often people think we’re not listening," said Davenport Councillor Ana Bailao. "Reaching out to people and their ideas is what we need to do the most."
Etobicoke Councillor Peter Leon, who attended three roundtable sessions, added he saw a willingness in participants be partners with city hall.
The reports on the roundtables, among other things, said manufacturers want "accurate knowledge of the length of time a permit will take" and don’t want their utilities disrupted, while young technology-driven entrepreneurs have a hard time getting bank loans because they lack collateral.
Councillors on Tuesday approved a set of recommendations to help, ranging from better advertising of city business and procurement programs to a study of Toronto’s fiber-optic network and creation of a list of "Toronto’s most exciting 10 young entrepreneurs under the age of 40."
The future of the new committees, should city council grant them final approval, is not guaranteed: Shelley Carroll, a North York councillor, said some of the city’s existing advisory groups, such as the Toronto Film Board, are "stressed about what happens to (them) next" because some went "into Limbo" for a time at the beginning of last council term, and others simply disappeared.
Toronto is taking other steps to help its 88,000 businesses reach new markets. It signed an agreement of understanding in June with the region of Thrace, Turkey and will announce another with Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, on October 27.
Williams saw opportunity in a Toronto connection with Brazil, a country with lots of mining and pipeline work underway. City officials on a trade mission to Sao Paulo, she said, "can also be advocates for what we have to offer."