Close to 150 people were on hand for the Elliot Lake Chamber of Commerce annual awards dinner at the city's Collins Hall on Hillside Drive North Thursday night. The business organization honoured three of its members with achievement awards. In each, the judges chose from among seven to eight nominees to select the three individual winners.
The winner of the Service Excellence Award was Elliot Lake Meats and Deli, accepted by owner Bert McGonegal and his employee Barbara Pelland. Soo Mill captured the Red Briffet Award for Community Involvement. The award was accepted by Soo Mill rep Brian Cuthbertson.
Weir Canada Ltd. was the winner of the President's Award for Economic Development. That award was accepted by Weir Operations Manager Wayne Maillet.
The keynote speaker for the evening was Aime Dimatteo, of Sudbury, Director General of the Federal Economic Development Initiative in Northern Ontario (FEDNOR). He has served as Director General for the government agency for the past 8 years. He said the Trudeau government's plan for development in Northern Ontario was derived after some 1,000 stakeholder conversations were conducted over a one year period. Dimatteo said that information was derived from people of Northern Ontario's perceptions of their needs and future visions. The completed package was approved by Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains, last April.
The plan focuses on 11 strategies designed to improve training by funding initiatives in mining, agriculture and food and health sciences and ICT digital. Dimatteo says the idea is to grow companies to become globally competitive. He said, "We need to get companies to adopt technology including websites and advertising to shrink the 'digital divide' in Ontario."
Through FEDNOR the federal government is funding ICT and digital infrastructure. The feds are focusing on technology adoption, women entrepreneurship (for which Dimatteo says we have the highest standard in the world), promoting a bilingual workforce, expanding export development (which he says is nowhere near where it should be), promoting indigenous business growth (125 of 126 of the province's Indigenous communities are found in Northern Ontario), and, improving program access in Northern Ontario which means programs need to have merit to be considered for government grant support and in need of more visibility.
Dimatteo told Elliot Lake Chamber of Commerce members and guests that, contrary to popular belief, the North has a huge agricultural potential, noting "there is no new agricultural land available in southern Ontario." He told them the Temiskaming area has more than 1,000,000 acres of usable agricultural land which can be developed into a huge economic driver for Northern Ontario.
In building stronger communities in the North, Dimatteo pointed out there are approximately 5,000 foreign students studying at post secondary education institutions in our communities. He said they are asking himself questions like, "Do I like living here?"; "Is this a safe environment?" and "Can I practice my faith?". He said we need to invest in local training, facilitate newcomer integration, invest in community infrastructure, plan and leverage resources and support comprehensive community planning to retain foreign students.
He said he always warns college, university and municipal officials not to compete with each other in an attempt to entice new medical doctors, professors or other professionals to their communities. He said, "I always warn them not to go there." He said when that is done it makes it harder for everyone, by increasing the cost of recruitment.
Helen Lefebvre, a candidate for councillor in Elliot Lake in the municipal election and a local business owner, told Dimatteo she and her business partner had great difficulty deriving the type of information he presented to the Chamber at the dinner when they were putting together their business plan over 1 year ago. He told her he would address the problem which she experienced on the FEDNOR website.
He said, "We will put you in touch with all relevant information." FEDNOR can be reached online at FEDNOR.gc.ca or by telephone at 1-877-333-6673.