Northern Ontario Businesses Confident in Ontario's Economic Future

**TIMMINS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE NEWS RELEASE**

Nearly 60 percent of northeastern Ontario businesses say they are confident in Ontario’s economic future, according to the 2019 Ontario Economic Report, issued this week by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) in partnership with the Timmins Chamber of Commerce.

This is a seven-point increase from the previous year, as revealed in the 2019 Ontario Economic Report (OER)’s annual business confidence survey.

“Businesses are gaining confidence in themselves,” said Nancy Mageau, president of the Timmins Chamber of Commerce.

“Many Timmins businesses believe their organization’s revenues will increase or stay the same over the next twelve months, with only fourteen percent anticipating a decline. This represents a notable change in direction from 2018.”

At the same time, challenges relating to access to talent, embracing technological innovations, and the cost of doing business—including regulation, taxation, and input prices—remain major sources of concern. The report indicates that northern Ontario businesses’ main area of concern is a declining population and as a result, a shortage in an available workforce.

“Ontario’s overall prosperity depends on the strength of its regional economies, yet these vulnerabilities are expected to be most acutely felt in rural regions of the province. We should all be concerned that the province’s employment growth has been largely concentrated in the Greater Golden Horseshoe since 2003, while other regions have experienced slow or even negative growth during that same period,” said Rocco Rossi, President and CEO of the OCC.

Tackling many of these issues will be a major focus for the Ontario Chamber in 2019, which will also work on some specific areas of interest for northeastern Ontario. In particular, the Ontario Chamber will look to address northern Ontario’s labour shortages and decreasing population, in part due to continued advocacy by the Timmins Chamber on topics such as a service skills strategy. The Timmins Chamber will continue to work directly with the Ontario Chamber network throughout the coming months to address barriers that impact local businesses.

The OER contains several different perspectives on Ontario’s economy, produced by different partners for the Ontario Chamber: this includes the Business Confidence Survey, as conducted by Navigator; a Business Prosperity Index, as developed by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (CANCEA), and a 2019 Economic Outlook, as prepared by BMO Financial Group.