Bevilacqua, Del Duca hold court at Economic Club

Yorkregion.com
April 20, 2016
By Adam Martin-Robbins

If the goal was to convince people from outside the city to give some thought to setting up shop in Vaughan then Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua and Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca hit the mark in their discussion hosted by the Economic Club of Canada Monday.

That was Harvey Nightingale’s assessment.

The longtime Thornhill resident said his interest certainly would’ve been piqued, if he was hearing for the first time about the major infrastructure projects and other initiatives under way in the city.

“I don’t know about being sold (on Vaughan), but what I would have done is I would have started thinking about something I would not necessarily have considered (before),” said Nightingale, who works downtown as a senior associate at Hill and Knowlton Strategies. “I wouldn’t jump up and go to Vaughan, but I’d say to my wife of 45 years, ... ‘Hey, maybe we should go see what’s going on there.’”

Bevilacqua and Del Duca, MPP for Vaughan, carried on a wide-ranging “conversation” in front of about 200 people gathered at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre Hotel for the event billed as Investing in the 905: The Vaughan Advantage.

The discussion, moderated by World Council on City Data CEO Patricia McCarney, covered matters ranging from some of the major, provincially funded infrastructure projects currently underway in the city to their personal journeys in the world of politics.

Among the former, were the Spadina subway extension, Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital and the Hwy. 427 extension.

They also talked at length about the city’s emerging downtown, known as the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, being built across more than 400 acres in the Jane Street and Hwy. 7 area, where the subway line will terminate.

“Vaughan is a very attractive place for the province to look at with its rapid growth, with its very progressive, very hardworking, very professional municipal leadership, which we see clearly exemplified by the mayor and by members of council,” Del Duca told the crowd, which included business people from across the GTA as well as a 21 City of Vaughan staffers, five councillors and a handful of Vaughan Chamber of Commerce representatives.

“I’ve lived in Vaughan for about 27, 28 years now and it has radically transformed over that period of time. We want to make sure we get it right and that’s why we are bringing forward the level of investment that we are.”

For his part, Bevilacqua touted the city’s proximity to three 400-series highways and two major railway terminals, its diverse, multi-lingual and well-educated population plus the “stability” achieved by city council’s move to cap property tax hikes at a maximum of three per cent for the entire four-year term.

“Think about what’s going on in the city of Vaughan right now: we have a hospital being built, in large part thanks to the community, but also thanks to the provincial government. We have an extension of (Hwy.) 427 because the case was made,” he said. “We also have a downtown core where 30,000 people are going to live. We have a YMCA (community centre) that is also being built because of an effective partnership between governments and the private sector.

“I think you understand the theme here. The theme is that to build a society, an enlightened culture, you can’t be just thinking about yourself. You need to understand you’re part of the system and that you can’t be absent when it’s not convenient to you. You always have to be present and you have to contribute to the economic and social and cultural well-being of the people you represent.”

Paul Mertes attended the event and liked what he heard.

“I thought it was very encouraging and I didn’t know as much about the full magnitude of what was going on in Vaughan,” said Mertes, CEO of Mississauga-based Circuitmeter. “It’s good to see that they’re so politically motivated to make a clean and efficient community.”

The only message he found a little disconcerting was the repeated talk about competing with other municipalities to attract investment.

He felt the emphasis ought to focus on bolstering the entire region

“I think that every part of the GTA that’s strong makes the rest of it stronger,” Mertes said.

Del Duca said he was pleased with the responses he heard from attendees afterward.

“I think we clearly demonstrated why there’s a clear advantage to investing, living, working and playing in Vaughan.”

The city says it spent approximately $2,500 on the event with the purchase of two tables.