Budgeting Mess
One minute City Council is facing a $650,000 budget deficit and then the next minute we have a $127,000 surplus!
Did the City Managers and Council show fiscal restraint and did they make necessary cuts to ensure the budget was met?
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NO!
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Actually, NAV Canada won a battle that saw the city hit with an additional $700,000 cost / reduction in revenues! So what happened to produce a surplus? The province forgave the city of $1,600,000 set to be repaid for social services. Now do the math $700,000 + $650,000 = $1,350,000 (a huge deficit). So were council and the budgeting committee lucky or efficient?
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The fatal flaw in all of this was the decision to appoint only part of council to the budget steering committee! All of council use to sit on this committee, as they should, and most of the current council and mayor thought that not all were needed! However, we have seen that newly elected members and those not sitting on the committee are unaware of the proceedings and thus causes problems due to a lack of awareness when other matters are discussed at council!
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A permanent change to include all of Council on the Budget Steering Committee would prove wise!
Logistical Crutch
After hearing the horrible news of Teleperformance’s expected closure I couldn’t help but feel like I was experiencing a horrible case of Déjà-Vu!
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What startled me was the response to the closure. It seems some of those at City Hall can’t seem to perform basic math skills!
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A short list of recent business closures or Major Job Losses over last 4 years:
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Satisfied Brakes – 125 Job Losses
Star Tek – 398 Job Losses
Teleperformance – 120 Job Losses
Government Cuts – 50 Job Losses
Total Job Losses – 693 Job losses
A short list of recent business openings or Major Jobs Created over the last two terms of Council:
Matrix Logistics (Shoppers) – 120 Job Hirings
11 Points Distribution (Target) – 350 Job Hirings – projected
Total Job Hirings – 470 Job losses
These totals only worsen if we consider Domtar’s losses of 910 to SCM’s approximately 800 hires!
So please all of you at City Hall stop trying to say that the opening of these distribution centres will replace our job losses!!! Officially there is no more room nor has there ever been for future job losses!
Our Welfare or Ontario Works recipients and ODSP recipients continue to rise drastically as you turn a blind eye to obvious economic issues which you need to be addressed and not dismissed publicly in an effort to ensure the public that you are aware of our current economic climate and working towards bettering the situation.
False Recognition or Phony Representation
Jamie (Admin) beat me to the punch but did anyone else catch this epic and new trend that Economic Development has been using.
So here is the deal, Cornwall Pays for ads to promote several building initiatives in an effort to attract new investors!!!! Nothing wrong with this and it is a good idea!!! The bad idea and total WTF was when the same people made a media release stating that Cornwall was being recognized for its construction! It sounded like we won an award or are being applauded for the great work……….but wait a minute it was a paid $5,000 dollar advertisement more commonly known as an advertorial!
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What’s next? Create your own award and then present it to yourself? Silly Rabbit Tricks are for Kids!
(Comments and opinions of Editorials, Letters to the Editor, and comments from readers are purely their own and don’t necessarily reflect those of the owners of this site, their staff, or sponsors.)
Excellent story Mike & account of the strange thinking of city mayor & councilors who obviously think that they can pull the wool over our eyes,spend our hard earned tax money which is higher than larger cities near here.They lie about figures,lie about population growth & hope that we are sheep without calculators.The investors that are staying away in droves knows Cornwall too well,maybe they will show some interest when new people,new ideas,new morals as well enter the equation
good read..congrats on your new career in optics ,Mike..good luck to you..I’m sure you’ll succeed.
Mike
This is great information.
In your math did you include any new self employment and small businesses that may have started?
I was looking into the new Target center. I am hoping for the possibility of finding gainful employment in the immediate area rather then always in Toronto and area. I have even considered a career change.
In my research I found a Logistics research company named MWPVL. In it they state that Cornwall could become the next epicenter for logistic centers. That is not a bad thing considering all the trucks seen on 401.
However the reason they give for Cornwall being a potential good option is troublesome as they state
(1) Relatively inexpensive land cost and on-going taxation rates
(2) An available labor force suited to blue collar shift work
(3) Low penetration of organized labour
(4) A good level of business-friendliness as it pertains to provincial and regional politics
Seeing this opinion presented of local area would clearly define why my last two inter views resulted in the “You are the ideal candidate but you are over qualified to work in the area and we fear loosing you to other clients or companies offering larger salaries”
Really?????
Sorry I should have included the link, hope it’s ok to add this kind of information Admmin
http://www.mwpvl.com/html/cornwall_ontario_distribution_epicenter.html
Industrial incubator
Do accelerators produce better start-up companies? And what are they anyhow?
My first real engagement with such initiatives was more than 15 years ago, when I became a partner in a business in the City of Krakow called Pol-Can-Med. Our company could have been labeled an incubator, which is apparently different from an accelerator. According to The Startup Factories, a report published by Nesta last year, accelerators make a pre-seed investment for equity, and develop cohorts of start-ups rather than individual companies, which move on after a short period of intensive support. The declining expense of technology – hardware costs have fallen by a factor of 100 over the past decade – means companies can be started with little capital.
Probably the first accelerator was Paul Graham’s in Silicon Valley. Since 2005 it has fostered almost 500 start-ups, including big successes such as AirBnB and Dropbox. After three months of being hot-housed, each team must make a pitch to investors on Demo Day to rise further funding. According to the founders, the value of the portfolio of companies that Y Combinator has hatched is in the billions of dollars. Other well-known players include Techstar, in locations ranging from Colorado, New York and Seattle in the US, and Seedcamp in London and Europe. Again, many of their alumni have raised later rounds of capital, and the legions of start-ups they breed grow every year.
This method of building new companies at warp speed is fascinating. The philosophy is to try lots of different ideas, fail fast, and pivot if something does not work. I like the sense of urgency, the work ethic, the high-pressure environment that helps drive rapid progress, and the incredible opportunities to network and cross-fertilise. The emphasis seems to be on backing lots of pure start-ups with very small amounts of cash, mainly run by very young founders.
However, in general, I think start-ups take a long time to become viable – years not months – so trying to achieve so much in such a concentrated period of time feels unrealistic. Yet tech companies are much more scalable than traditional enterprises, and world-beaters such as Google have proved that you can grow by creating online traffic – and let revenue follow afterwards.
There are now an estimated 123 accelerator programmed around the world according seed – db.com, a database of seed companies, and the proliferation of new ventures shows no sign of slowing. Some veterans think many will close, just as many of the projects they incubate will fail. But all this frantic activity will surely boost entrepreneurship, stimulate jobs, and – in the long run – create wealth, so it deserves applause.
P.S.
Business incubators are programs designed to support the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts. Incubators vary in the way they deliver their services, in their organizational structure, and in the types of clients they serve. Successful completion of a business incubation program increases the likelihood that a startup company will stay in business for the long term: older studies found 87% of incubator graduates stayed in business, in contrast to 44% of all firms.
Incubators differ from research and technology parks in their dedication to startup and early-stage companies. Research and technology parks, on the other hand, tend to be large-scale projects that house everything from corporate, government or university labs to very small companies. Most research and technology parks do not offer business assistance services, which are the hallmark of a business incubation program. However, many research and technology parks house incubation programs.
Ludwig
Very interesting, I think your writing accurately depicts exactly what is wrong with so many industries in Canada. We actually produce little or nothing.
It seems we are so burdened or pushed into change that change has become our industry. Change, though necessary, is more of a monetary burden then making a poor product. It produces nothing of any value and keeps people focused only on change or self improvement with no real chance bettering their status. This is a great way to mislead a people.
Education is the same, we currently only teach people how to fit into society, there is never anything else. The very system needs cannot predict with any accuracy what tomorrow will bring, yet they continue to teach us about tomorrow. They add nothing of any value and nobody that can specialize in something and make improvements based on experience.
Great Article Mike
This is not the first time that government accounting has turned a deficit into a surplus. In the USA, any private person or business that uses government accounting methods to prepare financial statements, could be charged with fraud.
City Smarts ? OR CITY Stupidity ?
Nav Canada won a battle with the City $700 thousand .
then the City just give up failing to fight that judgement
to the next step one big error in judgement I would say but what the heck it’s only taxpayers money & they seem to have little
respect for that .
Whats really amazing is the spin that they put on it .
Harry Valentine you are so very right indeed. If people believe in what the government tells them to be true then they need their heads examined thoroughly. The government just gives you lies one lie after the other. I remember when old Eustace Mullins said on youtube.com that you can sell the Brooklyn Bridge 25 times a day to the American people and they would buy it and the same thing with Canadians. People should not believe in the government and when the government gives you a figure it is at least two to three times worse than what they are telling you. The same things is with everything else – use your own good common sense and think things over before you make a decision.
We are all losing industries, IT companies, etc. to globalism. Globalism is communism and I wish that people would look into this matter to know what is going on. Things will not get better until people wake up – it is only going to get a great deal worse.
Globalization
The World Economic Forum’s annual gathering is normally little more than a toast to the benefits of increasing global GDP, trade, and investment. But this year’s meeting comes at a time when economic expansion can no longer be taken for granted, and when the uneven benefits of past growth are sparking mass social unrest.
So it is little wonder that doomsday scenarios about the “seeds of dystopia” and the risks of “rolling back the globalization process” are being dangled in Davos. The world’s economic and political leaders stand warned: do globalization better, or it will be derailed by the growing legions of the discontented.
Leaders would be unwise to ignore this warning. Discussions in Davos must go beyond how to rectify the imbalances in developed countries’ debt-to-GDP ratios. They must finally pay attention to the wider imbalances generated by unfettered globalization.
Popular anger is directed not only at the bank bailouts, soaring public debt, and bleak employment prospects of recent years. All around the world, people have fallen afoul of a two-track economic process whereby whole industries have been sacrificed to cheaper imports, whole regions have been consigned to abandonment or degradation, and whole populations have been frozen out of economic progress.
Nowhere are these imbalances more evident than in the global food system. Globalization has been wholeheartedly embraced in the service of feeding the world: bilateral and multilateral trade agreements have been put in place to allow food to flow from food-surplus to food-deficit regions.
Yet this model has failed spectacularly. The food bills of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) increased five- or six-fold between 1992 and 2008. Imports now account for around 25% of their current food consumption. The more they are told to rely on trade, the less they invest in domestic agriculture. And the less they support their own farmers, the more they have to rely on trade. Countries that fall into this vicious cycle leave their citizens vulnerable to historically volatile prices on international markets, which means increased hunger and insecurity.
Despite the persistent challenges of hunger and food inequality, people are told to embrace more open markets, more trade, and more globalized economic processes. Yet open markets do not function as perfectly as many at Davos would like to think. Food moves where purchasing power is highest, not where the need for it is most urgent.
This blind embrace of globalization from above means missing out on key opportunities that do not fit the dogma. If we were to support developing-world small landholders, who are often the poorest groups, we could enable them to move out of poverty and enable local food production to meet local needs. Trade would complement local production, rather than justifying its abandonment.
Trade and investment agreements are the gateways through which globalization passes on its way to redefining a country’s economic landscape, and they are increasing at an impressive pace. There are 6,092 bilateral investment agreements currently in force, with 56 concluded in 2010 alone.
That growth reflects the flawed economic model of the pre-crisis years, which relied on indifference to where growth came from, how sustainable it was, and who was benefiting from it. If we are to learn anything from the ongoing crisis, it must be to start asking the right questions.
Every new bilateral agreement, every chapter of globalization, should be measured against new criteria. How sustainable and how evenly spread will the macroeconomic benefits be? Will they facilitate genuine development and provide dignified opportunities to those who become economically displaced?
An EU-India free-trade agreement is now imminent – and could be the litmus test for how we reengage with globalization in the wake of the crisis. Some estimates suggest that the proposed tariff liberalization in the dairy and poultry sectors could threaten the livelihoods of 14 million very poor households in India, half of them landless.
Globalization involves winners and losers – that has been established. But losing out, for a subsistence farmer, means sinking into dire poverty and hunger. Is the denial of a vulnerable population’s right to food an acceptable byproduct of a trade deal? Should the primary goal be to multiply the interests of powerful multinationals? Are these the economic processes that we want, or need?
These are the questions that leaders must ask at Davos. Globalization can survive the crisis. But not as we know it. Globalization must be taken back for the interests of the many.
Globalization only benefits the 1% of this world and the rest of the world is going to be made dependent on the government for handouts. I wonder if anybody has taken a good look at what Detroit and Flint Michigan became – that city used to hold at least 2 million people and now down to 700K. Detroit looks like a war zone and the people have become more criminal than ever before.
Take a good look at Cornwall that lost industries since 1960 but we cannot compare Cornwall to Detroit. Detroit was “motown” motor city and it was prosperous as far as the car industry is concerned but now everything has been shipped off to China and other countries and is continuing to do just that.
There isn’t much of industry left around here in North America and whatever is left is in the US. Everyone will be living a lower standard of living very soon. Look at Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and the list just goes on and on. None of the world’s leaders have the answers to the problems that are happening today. They try one thing and it gets worse and worse. In India it is only the rich that proper and the upper middle class. The poor stay poorer and have absolutely no chance to get ahead. Even the Mexicans have left their farms and infiltrated the US looking for work as illegals anything to survive. Farming in Mexico is almost nil now with all the drug trade going on with the gangs and illegal guns and murders.
I don’t see any good coming out of free trade and it isn’t free trade at all. Everyone should expect a much lower standard of living. This will be coming sooner than we all think.
The leaders that go to Davos Switzerland go there to enjoy themselves in such a beautiful mountainous area and they are part of the 1% and don’t care about their people. The likes of George Sorros goes there and he is a war criminal. No I have absolutely no confidence in any of these people at all. We are really stuck for sure. The world’s economy is only getting worse and not better and it would take decades to ever find a miracle out of this mess.