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Montréal economic development plan officially launched

Gérald Tremblay, Chairman of the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) and Mayor of Montreal, officially launched the CMM's economic development plan, entitled "Charting Our International Future: A Competitive Montreal Metropolitan Region" on the 9 May.

The CMM, the Government of Québec, the Government of Canada and the private sector are investing a total of 6 million dollars per year to make the metropolitan Montreal region more competitive internationally. These funds will finance the creation of industrial clusters as well as value-added projects to make these clusters more competitive.

Mr. Tremblay also enthusiastically introduced the leaders of the first four industrial clusters to have responded to the CMM's call for action:

• Jacques St-Laurent, President of Bell Helicopter, for the aerospace cluster
• Martin Leblanc, EVP and Chief Operating Officer of Caprion Pharmaceuticals, for the life sciences cluster
• Martin Tremblay, Managing Director of Ubisoft Montreal, for the information technologies cluster
• François Macerola, Vice-President of Commercial and Legal Affairs, Cirque du Soleil, for the film cluster

Other clusters are still in the process of being formed.

"I am extremely proud of this economic development plan and very happy that it has received the support and encouragement of our political, economic and academic leaders. " declared Gérald Tremblay. "We talked to experts, received input from the elected officials of the 63 municipalities that make up the CMM, and held public consultation sessions last fall throughout the region. With this economic development plan, the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal has set itself ambitious goals and provided courses of action to enable the metropolitan economy to reach its full potential."

In terms of GDP per capita, the CMM currently ranks last out of the 26 North American metropolitan regions with over 2 million inhabitants. After holding public consultation sessions, the CMM Council adopted the economic development plan on February 17, 2005. The plan will guide the CMM's efforts to increase its international competitiveness and significantly improve its ranking among the world's major cities.

The four key strategies of the CMM's plan are to ensure that Montreal becomes:

• a learning metropolitan region that meets the challenge of improving training for their human capital and ensuring that the supply of skilled workers is sufficient for the demand
• a competitive and prosperous metropolitan region that encourages the development metropolitan-wide industrial clusters and nourishes the dynamics of innovation
• an attractive metropolitan region with modernized municipal infrastructure, consolidated urban and inter-urban transit and transportation systems and an improved quality of life
• a world-class metropolitan region with an established brand that helps promote Montreal on international markets and stimulates foreign direct investment

For more information on the economic development plan and metropolitan clusters, visit the CMM's website www.cmm.qc.ca/pde.

Source: BBC news