Metro leads the pack
Tri-community ranked best place to do business in Atlantic Canada, New England region for second consecutive time
For the second consecutive time, Metro Moncton was ranked the number one place to do business in Atlantic Canada and the New England states.
In fact, the top four spots in KPMG's competitive alternatives study were taken up by Atlantic Canadian cities, and the top two spots were taken by New Brunswick cities -- Moncton at number one, with Fredericton trailing just behind it.
The study, which is done every two years, compares business competitiveness for more than 100 cities in 10 countries, breaking the cities down into regions.
Moncton, as if anyone had any doubt, leads the pack once again, ahead of such cities as Halifax, Boston, Bangor, Me., Manchester, N.H. and Providence, R.I. St. John's was ranked number seven.
"It's always great when you have that third-party verification of what we tell people all the time," says John Thompson, CEO of Enterprise Greater Moncton.
"If you look at it from the point of view of not only from us going out trying to attract companies in, that obviously helps us in our pitch. But its also great news for our existing companies who have invested their money and will be investing in more jobs in the future."
Thompson says while the study says Moncton, it is actually referring to Metro Moncton, so Riverview, Dieppe and Moncton all have reason to be proud.
Jason Hargraft, branch manager at Drake employment agency in Moncton, moved here with his young family from Calgary a few years ago. He was working at an employment agency in Calgary and he saw the numbers in which Atlantic Canadians were leaving their homes for the west in search of better paying jobs.
"My thinking was, 'OK, we've pulled so many people, it's got to have left some holes for employment,' which obviously it has done now," he says.
Hargraft knew he would enjoy the area and he decided to relocate to Moncton.
"Myself having a new family, Calgary just got so crazy, we sold at the right time, did alright with real estate, came out here and you buy a castle for the third the price you would out west," he says with a laugh.
His family chose the Moncton area to settle because of its proximity to national parks and other cities. It's centralized location in the Maritimes made it a natural choice, he says.
"We just fell in love with it, it's a great place," he says.
Hargraft says at Drake he is seeing a lot of demand for skilled workers in the Moncton area because so many people have left the region in search of better paying jobs elsewhere.
But he says things will likely turn around.
Business is obviously booming in Metro and Hargraft says as people migrate back to the area to work, the labour force will get stronger. Already he is seeing more people from Ontario-west responding to ads placed to entice them to move east.
"If more businesses set up here and more jobs become available that are better paying than they have been historically here, people are going to come back home. And new people, people like myself, are going to say, 'Hey, I can live cheaper here, it's a better quality of life, it's a great place to live.'"
The KPMG study measures several factors including the business environment in the region, labour availability and skills, economic conditions and markets, innovation, infrastructure, cost of living and quality of life.
Moncton topped the KPMG list in 2006 for the Atlantic and New England regions as well.
In the study, business costs are expressed as an index, with the United States being assigned the baseline index of 100.00. A cost index less than 100 indicates lower costs than the U.S. and anything higher indicates higher costs that in the U.S. Moncton's business cost is 94.9, representing a 5.1 per cent cost advantage relative to the United States, the biggest advantage in the Atlantic and New England regions.
Fredericton is slightly higher at 95.3, Charlottetown is at 95.8, Halifax is 96.6 and St. John's comes in at 99.5.
Enterprise Greater Moncton sponsors Moncton to be considered in the KPMG study, John Thompson says.
"This is a huge study, they compare apples to apples in the study and they look at the regional differences, so it's not just coming out number one when comparing us to Toronto, it's similar municipalities, similar sizes, that's what makes this validation so great," says Thompson.
Enterprise Greater Moncton will be using the facts from this study to convince companies that the Moncton area is a great place to do business in, he says. A series of videos the agency made recently promoting the area may actually have to be revamped a bit to include the latest study.
Jason Hargraft is hopeful of what could take place in the future.
"Hopefully businesses set up here, more people come, real estate goes up, job rates go up -- everything that happened in Calgary," he says. "I mean, it's never going to be that fast, but if it's anything like what we've seen elsewhere, especially out west, then right on, glad to be here."
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