Grant Hopcroft
Municipal expert, former Director of Intergovernmental and Community Liaison, City Manager’s Office, City of London (Ontario)
Mr. Hopcroft, please tell us about the municipality you come from. What makes your municipality different from other municipalities in Canada? What can, or even should, Ukrainian local governments borrow from your municipality’s working practices?
The city I come from – London – is a medium-sized city, with the population totaling about 380 000 people. It is located in Southwestern Ontario, close to Toronto and to the city of Detroit in the United States of America. We are in the center of a fertile agricultural area, which is surrounded by the Great Lakes. We have a very diverse economy, a large part of which is based on our geographic characteristics: our access to three border crossings to the US within an easy drive from London, plenty of good quality fresh water from the Great Lakes. We have a highly-educated workforce, with both Western University and Fanshawe College based in our city. What we have is a combination of all these rich resources: natural and human. And, as a result, we have many regional head offices, and some Canadian head offices of multi-nationals in our city. In our community, we have advanced manufacturing, agri-food, agribusiness, automotive-related manufacturing, an advanced technology cluster, a growing digital gaming sector that has developed a global reputation. We also have a strong healthcare and education sector because of our educational resources. Within our community there are regional hospitals that serve Southwestern Ontario. As a result, we have a lot of businesses that are also related to the healthcare sector. Concerning what Ukrainian local governments can borrow from our working practices, we are regarded as a community that has a reputation for efficient delivery of services. We have developed a number of regional partnerships, and the most recent and environmentally friendly example of that is that we have developed a regional multi-material recycling center, which is utilized by many of the communities in Southwestern Ontario, where we can combine our recycled material waste stream into value added products, and we can generate better pricing. Because of our reputation as an efficient provider of services, we have a lot we can share in terms of best practices. In Ontario, we have a benchmarking process called OMBI (Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative) where we typically rate very highly. We continually fine-tune operations to make sure that we are following or developing best practices as well as building on other experience that we have gained over the years.
What kind of municipal programs do you develop and implement for SME development?
The basic answer to this question is part of my response to your first question, which is our reputation as an efficient provider of services. As a result, we have a very competitive tax structure not only for our residents, but also for businesses located in the community. We have developed the London Economic Development Corporation, which delivers economic development services on behalf of the city under a Purchase of Service Agreement. We have moved also to an incubator model that is very cost-effective and which builds on the ability to create collaborative partnerships with others in the community: our Chamber of Commerce, the business community in general, and our educational institutions. We also have small business centers that are supported by provincial and federal funding, and also supported by local government to provide mentoring for both startups and existing businesses to make sure that they are benefiting from mentorship where experience is needed and that they have a resource that can rely on when they run into problems. And part of this also is the relationships we have with the business schools in both the university and college with consultancy services that their students provide for small businesses under the supervision of their faculty. We also provide a number of civic services online to respect the time constraints that particularly small businesses have, so that they do not have to give up part of their workday when they are looking after their customers and running their business. They can access services online 24/7. They don’t have to make a trip to City Hall or a service kiosk to get what they need. We also provide resources to them so it is easy to navigate through our city website to those services that support businesses. For example, we have a business liaison office where businesses work their way through the regulation and the red tape that is part of any government process to help guide them through the steps they need to take if they are entrepreneurs wanting to start-up a small business such as a restaurant or a convenience store. It is a step-by-step process that helps them understand what they need to do next and who they can turn to if they need help. And there are a variety of other services that are very easily accessible online for businesses.
What is a social enterprise? How do local governments support such enterprises?
The definition that we go by is that it is an organization that uses business methods to promote social good, whether that is for people, or whether it is cultural or environmental. The primary objective is not to make money, although money helps bring in the resources to do their job and help transform their local community. It is all about developing healthy communities. Local governments in Canada support that in a variety of ways, some of which are financial and some of which are less about the money. For example, what the city can do is to endorse the work that they are doing and demonstrate to others that want to work with them that they have the support of their local government. In some cases the city provides ongoing base funding for organizations through a granting program based on the work that they do, and their demonstrated fiscal and management capacity and experience to deliver programs. This oftentimes provides them with the base of support they need to leverage other resources and to attract other partners and goes back to that concept of collaborative partnerships in our community. It also helps them utilize programs where there might be no support for the administrative overhead, but which is more project-based funding so that they can leverage the base resources they have to support their administration and leverage funds on project-based funding programs from our national and provincial governments, and also from the private sector. Sometimes Purchase of Service Agreements are used as well, where NGO are providing a service that they can provide more efficiently than governments can. So, we enter into Purchase of Service Agreements with them, we pay them for the service they provide, recognizing the value of that to the community in a cost-effective way. And another type of funding that we give recognition funding, which demonstrates that they have the support of the local government as a partner with what they are doing to leverage all of those other partnerships that I have mentioned earlier. The city may, for some non-profit organizations in the community, encourage city staff to lend their expertise in mentorship to support those efforts. For example, the London Middlesex Immigrant Employment Council, which is an organization that helps integrate new citizens in our community and new residents into the community. The city encourages staff at City Hall to provide mentorship to the people that are participating in those programs. The City works with NGOs such as the United Way, which is an umbrella organization that supports many charities in the community. The city designates a staff member to participate in the United Way annual fundraising appeal. The designated staff person takes temporary paid leave of absence from their job and they devote their working day to supporting the efforts of that non-profit organization. And in other cases, the City simply encourages our employees to be a part of the governance of those organizations and support and lend their expertise in that way.
How in your municipality do you attract and retain businesses? What incentives are given for them to stay and operate in your community?
One City programs is called “Open for business”, which is meant to demonstrate in a visible way that the City wants people to come to our community to do business and to stay in our community. So, it is a business friendly tax structure, a competitive work environment, an environment where they have confidence that their tax dollars are being wisely spent, and they will receive timely, efficient responses to their needs. If they a need a license or a permit to operate, these would be issued in a timely way so that they can begin operations quickly. It goes to the Business Liaison functions I referred to earlier, where people receive guidance to help work their way through the regulatory process. It also includes business online access to services. One such service is BizPal, which permits people who need to renew licenses to do that online rather than having to leave their workplace and come to City Hall.
Businesses do not like surprises. We are trying to put information about many of our processes and approval mechanisms on our website so that the process of decision-making is transparent to business. So, the more you can tell them upfront and then live up to that process the better business feels about the experience of doing business in the community.
I mentioned earlier about the collaborative partnerships. We have them in the community. A lot of the things that we do in terms of business attraction and retention are delivered through the local London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC). LEDC, as well as the small business centers, provide a number of workshops and seminars throughout the year on sector-based approaches to promote best practices, so that London businesses remain competitive and so that they are aware of business opportunities that arise. For example, our Chamber of Commerce is working on trade workshops for people who may not be exporting now but who have a capacity to export if they become comfortable enough with what is required to go through that process. City Administration and the Mayor are very open to dialogue and consultations with the business community. There are regular meetings between the Mayor and the Chamber of Commerce leadership so that issues that are top of mind for the business community are brought to the attention of both the Administration and the Mayor’s office so that the appropriate action can be taken. One of the things that I mentioned earlier is the Business Liaison program. One of the programs on London’s website which demonstrates what is behind the Business Liaison process is how to get to “YES”. That is what businesses want to hear and if you can make it as clear as possible HOW they can get there, then you will have better results at the end.
Please outline programs you have/plan to develop aimed at encouraging business, innovation and growth in your municipality. And is there any municipal program in your community intended to attract foreign entrepreneurs that seek to establish new businesses in Canada?
London’s approach is based in our city strategic plan. Our city’s strategic plan has strategies, one of which is Growing Our Economy. Another is a Sustainable Community. There are other strategies. But under each strategy there are also goals and objectives. One of the strategies that have come out of that strategic planning process is the development of the Economic Road Map for the community, which has been done in consultation with the business community. The Road Map identifies what we need to do to maintain our standing and to improve our standing in terms of our openness to doing business and our competitiveness as a community. In Canada, we have a declining population. The only thing that keeps our population increasing is immigration. We recognize that immigration and diversity are an important part of our future sustainability as a community. As a result, London has an immigration portal, which is our web-based portal to the world. Through the Portal website, immigrants can look at London, and consider whether they wish to come here, set up a business, to live in our community. Usually, it is a decision where you want to live and what kind of community you want to live in before one gets to the point of what do I need to do to have a business or have a career there. The immigration Portal helps do that in a way where potential migrants can ask questions online in their own language if they are not comfortable communicating in English. London provides Portal content in up to 20 languages. Another important element is London’s emphasis on attracting international students to our education institutions, not just at the post-secondary level, but at the secondary level as well. Because, in many cases, those students may return home to pursue their careers, in which case we want them to be ambassadors in their cities that they had a good experience in our community. But many decide to stay and create a life in Canada.
How do you collaborate with/support business incubators in your community?
I already talked about small business centers that provide counselling and seminars. They don’t provide space as such for incubation. We have social enterprises in the community which are providing social innovations space, which, in many cases, leads to that capacity for growth. We used to have an incubator that provided space for startup businesses, and it was effective during the time we had it. But we repurposed what we were doing, and much of the incubator space that London has now is in the business park of our university where they have the supportive environment and resources of the university, the resources of the business school, the mentorship that is available there. And we also have a partnership with our college and our university where we gave them serviced land in the city advanced Manufacturing Park. The University and College have leveraged federal and provincial money to create space where businesses can collaborate with them to make sure that their processes are validated and where they can test their products. There has been an emphasis on automotive-manufacturing, but Fanshawe College’s new Canadian Product Validation Centre will help businesses launch products or continue to provide products that have been through the validation process so that they can be sure that are meeting the standards that their customers demand.
Do you have any green initiatives in your community? How do you promote environmentally friendly business?
There are so many of them in our community. Some of them start at the top. For example, for many terms now we have had the Mayor’s Sustainable Energy Council. This is an initiative that is coordinated though the Mayor’s Office with support from the Environmental Services Department. It promotes sustainable energy practices in the community. I mentioned earlier the multi-material recycling facility which we consider a green initiative. It helps us increase the number of recyclable materials that we collect and reprocess through the contracts with the private sector. We have programs to promote energy efficiency, and we are currently looking at how we can help residents use city financing to pay for energy efficient measures for their home, and then repay the loan through their property tax bill. So it is a financing mechanism for people who cannot get a loan at a reasonable rate. The City promotes a number of these programs through our electricity utility as well as through our environmental services division. We have created an award-winning YouTube video our website which is helping to achieve the targets we have set to reduce carbon emissions in our city. Plug-in stations for electric cars have been installed in several locations throughout the city. London sets an example to the community through the Green Fleet, which is a fleet of city Hybrid and energy efficient vehicles. London showcases environmentally friendly businesses in our community and brought in regulations that promote waste reduction. For example, a new Tipping Fee Program was introduced. Tipping fee is the amount that is paid to dispose of waste in our landfill sites. There is a very high tipping fee on recyclable materials so that businesses have the financial incentives to take those recyclable materials out of the waste stream so that they can be reprocessed. The result is a significant decline in the amount of recyclable materials going into our landfill sites.