Youthful advantage

NRU
June 20, 2018
Rob Jowett

Brampton’s new economic development master plan focuses on leveraging the city’s competitive advantage--its youth.

“How do you face being outside of a major hub like Toronto but create your own identity and create your own growth?”

That’s the question that Brampton is facing, says economic development senior manager Denise McClure. And that’s what she says the city’s new economic development master plan is meant to achieve.

Brampton is the second-fastest growing city in Canada, gaining 14,000 new residents per year--growing from a population of 570,000 to over 900,000 by 2041.
“With that growth of residential comes the challenge… of how do we keep up with jobs for all these new residents moving in,” she told NRU.

Today, 60 per cent of residents leave the city every day to go to work. The master plan sets a target of creating 140,000 new jobs over the next 20 years.

“We want to make sure that everyone in Brampton has an opportunity to work [and] live in our community so that people don’t have to leave Brampton to find good, high-quality jobs.”

To achieve this, the master plan sets out three main goals: innovation, talent, and competitiveness and investment. That means trying to keep the city’s large number of young people in the city.

Brampton is the youngest community in the GTA. According to the 2016 census, 42 per cent of the population is under the age of 29. The residents’ median age is 36.5 years, compared to a national average of 41 years.

“Talent is our number one competitive factor--the fact that we have so many young people,” says McClure. “We want to make sure that the young talent that lives here knows that they have a future in Brampton.”

A significant part of the master plan involves working with Ryerson University, which is creating a new campus in downtown Brampton.

“With Ryerson coming [our youth] can stay, they can get educated right in Brampton,” says McClure.

Together with the school, the city will establish a new Centre for Innovation to help spur business and create new jobs for the graduates.

“There’s… companies doing extremely innovative things,” says McClure, “[And students] can have a career right here in Brampton.”

The master plan establishes a framework for achieve the targets in the Brampton 2040 Vision.

McClure says the economic development master plan is meant to help implement that vision.

“This brings it down a level into… what tactics and what is the roadmap to get us there.”
The Brampton Economic Development Master Plan will be considered by council at an upcoming meeting.