‘Our organization is making major efforts to become more agile, efficient and performing, but also to encourage real growth in economic activity,’ says mayor
An engagement at the Laval Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s monthly lunchtime speaker series on June 18 provided Mayor Marc Demers with the perfect podium to reveal the identity of the person the City of Laval has hired to lead a new economic development department which is replacing Laval Technopole and other agencies that were closed after former mayor Gilles Vaillancourt was ousted two years ago.
An attentive audience
“Putting into place this new management reflects the willingness of my administration to create more proximity with the business community in order to improve the efficiency of our common interests,” Demers told several hundred business people and owners who attended the popular luncheon at the Château Royal which is just across the street from Laval city hall.
Demers said the mandate of the new department, which will be headed by Marc Tremblay who comes with lengthy experience as a senior manager, will be to “simplify and accelerate the processing of investment dossiers in Laval, to efficiently support entrepreneurship and to act as facilitator for the business community.”
Serge Lamontagne, the city’s general manager, said: “The internalization of the economic development activities within the municipality on the one hand concretizes one of the recommendations of the Institut sur la gouvernance des organisations privées et publiques, and on the other hand also the necessity to take control of activities of the Centre local de développement the abolition of which was announced following the adoption of Bill 28 by the National Assembly of Quebec.”
Customer approach
With a client-centered approach, the new economic development department will be staffed with specialists working on the accounts of businesses interested in investing in the City of Laval. The city noted in a press release distributed to media during the presentation to the chamber of commerce and industry that Laval’s new internalized approach will be eliminating redundancy which sometimes occurred in the old system in which several economic agencies had been working side by side but sometimes without fully informing each other of all their activities.
More importantly perhaps, the new system also provides Laval’s executive-committee and city council with more direct oversight of economic development, following a period when the city’s at-arm’s-length economic development agencies were overshadowed by suspicion related to the political fallout from the collapse of the Vaillancourt administration and the charges brought against the former mayor.
Four areas of development
Laval’s new economic development department will work in four principal areas of activity. The first will involve property investments and its employees will be responsible for promoting Laval to developers as well as to companies wishing to set up operations here. This department will also be responsible for modernizing and re-developing Laval’s existing industrial parks to their maximum potential.
A second area of activity will involve the development of businesses. The team working in this department will be available to offer consultation services to entrepreneurs from all the economic sectors of Laval. A third area of activity will be dedicated to planning and economic development and the creation of strategic alliances between players.
The city says that those working within this department will be overseeing a sector of Laval’s economy which is one of the fastest growing in the province: biotechnology, IT, service industries, food and agriculture, tourism and retailing. A fourth and final area will be largely administrative and will furnish support to economic players in the community.
New committees coming
According to the mayor, members of this administration will be working closely in conjunction with seven committees that city council will be creating by September to coordinate the financing of small and medium-size businesses, as well as training for the jobs which will ultimately be the result of the work done by the new economic development department.
“The integration of economic development will accelerate the processing of dossiers through the various municipal services,” added Demers. “Our organization is making major efforts to become more agile, efficient and performing, but also to encourage real growth in economic activity on our territory.” At the same time, Demers said he was grateful to the governing board of Laval Technopole for its full cooperation in helping to bring about the transition with the shared goal of maximizing the City of Laval’s economic performance.