Upstart Cornwall
Boom Bust And Echo’ville
I had the pleasure today of attending a lecture given by Dr. David Foote - best selling Canadian author and a leading economist in Canada. He was in Cornwall today to speak to 200 or so business leaders about the power of demographics and how population trends could affect our economy as well as the worlds.
I am a human geographer by education and I had studied Dr. Foote’s book Boom Bust & Echo almost 10 years ago. I jumped at the chance to hear the man speak - and was even more excited about hearing his thoughts on our local economy. After 2 hours of listening to this man I was more then satisfied. In my lifetime I have never heard anyone make economics so simple. I have never heard someone make economics funny nor have I ever seen people react to population pyramids as if they were watching a Michael Moore film. On several occasions Dr. Foote’s data left people gasping. Gasping!
How was a Professor of economics able to leave a room full of business leaders and politicians wanting more? Well - aside from being funny and to the point - his message is incredibly simple. Population trends = economic trends. If you are able to follow population trends properly - then you should be able to predict when school closings, university admission drops, health care system stress and interest rate hikes will take place. And it can all be explained on a local scale and national scale if you look at the population trends.
And how does Cornwall fare? Well - anyone who has been knows 1 thing about this city; There is a real lack of people aged 20 to 35 and the city is going to feel the effects of this very soon. Cornwall bucks the national trends when it comes to youth and people in their early thirties - much more so than other cities our size. People are simply leaving and not returning. Dr. Foote mentioned that we (and the economic development office) should focus some time on trying to attract our youth who go off to university when they are ready to settle down and get a mortgage and have kids. That point alone is huge issue facing this economy in the future and is one i will be writing about a great deal in the near future.
He also pointed out how the new proposed hockey arena (a touchy subject in town) is a bad idea based on the population trend in the city. You see - right now Cornwall has a large percentage of its population that is either 10-18 and 40 - 50 (Children and grandchildren of Baby Boomers), which are the primary users of hockey arena facilities. He pointed out several times that in 5 years when the hockey dads can no longer play hockey and the young children move on to higher education (elsewhere), the demand for arena use will drop dramatically. People in my age group (30 -40) and my children’s age group represent a much smaller percentage of people in town.
In the end - I think that point will be the most talked about. I think in 2 hours Dr. Foote just convinced a bunch of decision makers that the new hockey pad proposal might need to be re-looked at. Hopefully the mayor and council were listening. Hopefully.
If people take nothing more from this speech - it should be that there are economic trends that we can easily predict - and our political leaders should be very aware of this fact.
As a side note - several other topics were brought up today that I will be writing about. I wanted to separate them into individual posts so we could discuss them all.
5 Responses to “Boom Bust And Echo’ville”
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November 9th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Wow.. Dr. Foote was in Cornwall? Dang, I missed it! I loved his book boom bust and echo!
November 9th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Wow, this seems like a wonderful book and I’m sure he was a great speaker. I took many economics courses in University and found it extremely boring, but it always made sense to me…I’m definitely going to pick up his book and give it a read.
Now, being in the finance/insurance industry, economics is something that is talked about a lot because of the babyboomers. Companies are encouraging us to focus on the babyboomers….and the real futre need that will arise is the need for Estate Planning. The trend is moving more toward the combination of insurance and investments rather than these products individually because of the aging babyboomers. Which makes sense…like you mentioned Population Trend = Economic Trend….
About Cornwall, what should we do then … ? How can we attract youth to stay in our city? How do we encourage growth and expansion if people are afraid or not willing to change? Would it be beneficial to have a University in Cornwall…? Would students attend University and then stay in the City and start a family?
I think I’m one of the rare people who returned to Cornwall after University. I returned because I wanted to be closer to my family and my husband. (boyfriend at the time). Had I not been close to my family and single, I may have stayed in the Guelph/TO area.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:34 am
I don’t think it’s as simple as making a wish list and saying let’s do it. Establishing a University is not a realistic option so I think we should focus on what we can actually do with what we have. It’s kind of like these people that say we should build a casino, we missed that boat about ten years ago when the Ontario Government was actually approving casino’s. We’ll, they aren’t any more so we should focus on the highway development, get the 4 pad build, and start letting people know this is an actual community. It’s one thing to talk within the City about what we are doing but nobody outside of the City limits knows much and for that matter most still think we stink because they haven’t been here in the past 3 years. A 4 pad will help because we will draw tournaments into the area and become an economic hub for the area. Our biggest asset (being close to Ottawa and Montreal) is also our biggest weakness because we lose $$ to those bigger communities. Cornwall doesn’t have the population base on its own to support most big box stores, ie. Future Shop, Michael’s, Toys R Us, etc. yet a community smaller than us such as Belleville has figured out how to support them. Hmmm…can we say highway traffic! What a great concept, we employ hundreds, maybe thousands of people and their jobs are covered from people living outside of our community who are just passing through. While we’re at it, let’s put the 4 pad along the 401 too. If the downtown suffers (which I doubt) we can offset their high property taxes with more tax relief grants with all of the extra revenue generated from new development along the highway. With lower downtown costs, empty building could fill with new tenants and bring more reason than ever to shop and support our local merchants.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Hey Michael - thanks for the feedback. You make some good points and I do think the City should be much more realistic in terms of the direction it is taking. There were some major assumptions made by Dr. Foote (like retired peopled wanting to move here - or that there are jobs for young people to return to) but also some very valuable points.
As a side note - Belleville and the Bay of Quinte area has far surpassed Cornwall’s population recently. Between Belleville, Trenton and Quinte - the population is roughly 100,000. That’s much more of an economy to support those stores.
Rumour mill has it that he following stores / restaurants are coming to town shortly.
- Chapters
- Boston Pizza
- Future Shop
I’m not sure if we can support that or not - but people are trying to bring the big boxes here.
Part of the problem is that the highway goes through Belleville / Brockville / Kingston much closer to the center of town than in Cornwall. It is hard to setup a shop just for people on the highway (see 12 flags shops) and nobody from town wants to drive that far out. I have a complete article coming on the arena so I won’t get into it too much here - but I think your idea should have been at least looked at as an option.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I just think it’s really dump to build an university in Cornwall..Seriously ppl..think realistically of cornwall and it’s facilities. Think about the people who live there…I think a college is good..and it’s doing the job it should..but university..BAD IdEA!