October 21, 2011
A Policy Agenda for the Great Lakes Century
In June 2011, the Mowat Centre and the Brookings Institution convened leaders from the government, business, labour, non-profit, and academic communities, from both Canada and the US, to identify ways to collaborate across the border and ensure the prosperity and sustainability of the region.
Participants agreed that more mature collaboration across the Canada-US border was essential to effectively tackle the region’s challenges and to capitalize on its significant opportunities.
This paper outlines the possible forms of cross-border regional collaboration. The Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region currently experiences a variety of sectoral partnerships. We propose a model of more mature collaboration through the establishment of a Great Lakes Partnership Council (GLPC) to connect and strengthen the many nodes of the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region network and help support the successful sectoral initiatives already taking place.
Executive Summary
Regions will be just as important as countries in ensuring the well-being of communities in the coming decades. The Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region—made up of the eight states and two provinces that surround these great waters—has everything necessary to succeed in this new world. We are convinced that strategic cross-border cooperation between states and provinces in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region is essential to the region’s future.
Regions are becoming more important because capital and talent tend to cluster geographically, so that employers have easy access to potential partners and employees. Clusters emerge in regions that possess natural, cultural, and place-defining attributes that make them attractive places to live and work. They also emerge near centres of public and private research and education.
The conventional narrative about the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region has been of a “rust belt” and the decline of heavy industry. Many communities in the region have not fared well in the past three decades as globalized patterns of production and trade have fundamentally restructured whole industries. These includes auto, steel, chemicals, machine tools, electronics, paper, and durable goods manufacturing.
This storyline misses the fact that production and trade models of the 20th century generated the wealth and infrastructure on which the Next Economy is being built. The capital, talent, and innovation produced in the 20th century are being deployed to produce new industries in the financial services, health services, food processing, energy, aerospace, ICT, transportation, and pharmaceutical sectors, among many others. Those who focus on the region’s decline also miss its educational facilities, research institutions, skilled human capital, and global knowledge and connections.
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In June 2011, the Mowat Centre and the Brookings Institution convened leaders from the government, business, labour, non-profit, and academic communities, from both Canada and the US, to identify ways to collaborate across the border and ensure the prosperity and sustainability of the region. Participants agreed that more mature collaboration across the Canada-US border was essential to effectively tackle the region’s challenges and to capitalize on its significant opportunities.
Regions are in part geographic, political and empirically measurable, but they are also social constructs which require imagination. This act of imagining the region needs to be strengthened. This paper outlines the possible forms of cross-border regional collaboration. The Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region currently experiences a variety of sectoral partnerships. We propose a model of more mature collaboration through the establishment of a Great Lakes Partnership Council (GLPC) to connect and strengthen the many nodes of the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region network and help support the successful sectoral initiatives already taking place.
The GLPC would be a civil society-led initiative. It would be a convenor, connector and organizer. It would work to fill leadership, information-sharing and advocacy gaps. It would identify and champion realistic initiatives and projects in the short-term, while continuing to scope out a long-term vision for the region. (continues)
Authors
Josh Hjartarson, Matthew Mendelsohn, Neville McGuire & Reuven Shlozberg
Release Date
October 21, 2011
ISBN
978-1-927350-04-1
Mowat Publication
No. 36