Buy American

Thank you for reading my Blog. Sorry I haven’t sent one out recently, as I have been on the road on and off for 3 weeks spreading the word about North Bay. And that’s what I want to talk about this week.

I was very excited to receive an invitation to the U.S. Consulate last week, to join the continued talks regarding the Buy American restriction that caused much concern in Canada. Area companies such as Wabi Iron Works and our own Central Welding were adversely affected. I had initiated a Mayor-to-Mayor campaign that received international coverage as a ‘peaceful’ method of discourse.

United States Consul General, Kevin Johnson said, “An economically confident Canada, with strong and diversified trading relationships, is also good for the American economy”. That means that what is good for one country is also good for the other, he added. Johnson praised the Canadian government for negotiating rather than getting stuck in an accusatory stance when the Buy American threatened to sour relations last year.

The one thing I heard loud and clear was that there is still a lot of U.S. money to be spent! Critics that said the solution was “too little too late” really don’t understand how slow the gears of government grind and that only a portion of the $800 billion set aside for the recovery has been doled out.

2020 Vision

I gave a talk last spring at The Manning Centre’s AGM, about where North Bay was in 2003 and where we are today. They must have really liked it as they asked me to take the show on the road!

The Centre arranged (at their expense) for me to head to Calgary, Ottawa, and Winnipeg to repeat the PowerPoint presentation and talk about the remarkable changes in North Bay during our administration. When you look at the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ photos, even our worst critics would have to applaud the recovery that took place and the boom that carried us through the recession.

As someone who is fiscally conservative, most of the talk centered on the financial turnaround our Council put in play. No pay for Agencies, Boards, and Commissions, selling the vacant lots – all the things that were in my 2020 Vision, were the highlights. But what really got the audience moving (they paid $30 to be there) was how we spent some of our money.

They were really impressed with how (and why) we used municipal tax dollars to build social housing; why we launched an immigration program; and especially about our leading-edge environmental programs (next story). I must say that I was extremely proud to stand in front of the Calgary audience of 80+ people and hear them applauding the City of North Bay’s initiatives!

Greening Government

It was a great honour to be asked to speak at the 1st Annual Greening Government Conference in Toronto last week. North Bay is recognized nationwide as a real leader in environmental efforts, and it was fun to show the audience why!

This was an interesting opportunity – to tell 125+ municipal, provincial, and federal folks all about North Bay’s Green Plan. As a salesman, I took the first 5 minutes to show them all the beautiful things they’re missing, by not living here – our waterfront, carousels, sunsets, downtown, parks, trails, education facilities, businesses – the stuff we see every day.

Then I got into the meat of the presentation – Making Green by Going Green. It really focused on the specifics of what we did, how much we saved, and what we invested in. Traffic lights, for instance; we spent $300,000 changing all our lights to LED and now we save $142,000 in annual electricity costs. Changing all our building lights to CFLs saves us $100,000 each year. And the list goes on and on.

After talking about the DriveSmart program that helped us save 90,000 litres of fuel last year, I got to the main event – a renewable energy installation at our Landfill Site. First, a methane gas collection and flaring system was installed. Now we’re installing a 1.6 megawatt generator, which will produce enough power for more than 1,200 homes and we will earn between $700 – 900,000 each year. I’m thinking about doing this presentation in town – let me know if you have any ideas!

Have a great summer

This is the last Blog for the summer – see you in September!