Promoting the Heart of the Continent

December 2009
Marketplace
Written by: Kelly Parker

How CentrePort Canada could positively affect local business.

Almost a century ago, Winnipeg was known as the “Chicago of the North” – a growing, cosmopolitan town with a super-charged economic engine firing on all cylinders. Sadly, the one-two punch of the First World War, which took a great chunk of a vibrant workforce, and the 1919 general strike that painted Winnipeg as unfriendly labour territory, all but seized up that engine.

Flash forward 90 years, and Winnipeg still boasts much of what made it so promising 100 years ago: a solid infrastructure, centralized location and a vibrant and sophisticated workforce. Situated as it is, Winnipeg is also a natural hub for cargo east or westbound across the country. The Port of Churchill is the only ocean port in the centre of the continent, giving access from the middle of Canada to the markets of Europe and Russia, and the highway system runs right down the middle of the continent to Mexico from Winnipeg.

Recognizing all of these factors, the provincial and federal governments are leading the way in carving out Winnipeg’s place at the heart of the shipping continent once again with the incorporation last fall of CentrePort Canada.

So what exactly is CentrePort?

By definition, it is actually two things. First, it is a private sector-focused organization, which is to be assembled and empowered to develop and promote the province’s well-established network of air, rail, sea and trucking routes and its ideal geographic position as a shipping hub. CentrePort is also a place—Manitoba’s inland port; 20,000 acres adjacent to the airport that has three railroads running through it; the CP, CN and Burlington Northern, as well as a major trucking route connecting the Trans-Canada Highway—both east and west—and Highway 75 southbound.

CentrePort’s board of directors appointed former provincial finance minister Diane Gray as founding CEO on September 17, 2009. Her appointment came sooner than expected, following shortly after Gary Doer’s announcement that he was stepping down as premier. Gray’s appointment should be the catalyst for the whole concept starting to take shape, says Kerry Hawkins, Chair of CentrePort’s Board.

“Most of CentrePort’s 20,000 acres is not developed yet,” he explains, “so the entity we’re talking about is a space of land that is ours to manage and develop, and over the course of a number of years, our mandate will be to create business opportunities that really are focused on goods coming into or going out of Winnipeg to various destinations around the world, where the focus will be on value-added.” All of that land is currently owned by a number of interests, says Hawkins, some private, while some is already in use. “Much of it is currently being farmed. The first thing we have to do is get a portion of the land serviced.”

They also have to secure much of the land. While the governments of Canada and Manitoba are jointly funding the next phase of the project, which involves building a high-speed transportation corridor into CentrePort from the west, it was reported in late September that the City of Winnipeg was making little headway in land talks with the RM of Rosser. The City would like to assume jurisdictional control of portions of the RM that lie inside the northwest corner of the Perimeter Highway—the 20,000 acres in question—in what would mark the first extension of the city boundaries since 1972.

That same week, a preliminary set of three slightly different land-use and proposed roadway-development plans was released, with final proposals expected by December 2009.

Because CentrePort is an idea as much as anything—it will not own any assets and its expressed role is only to act as facilitator in this process—it is difficult to pin down when it will be up and running. Having signed the new CEO, finding office space and setting up operations in space near the airport is next on the list. “I would guess that we might be looking at a five-year period to get something significant happening out there,” says Hawkins.

A significant boost came on October 8 with an announcement that the federal government would be contributing an additional $3.5 million to help with the start up and operation of CentrePort.This coincides with the launch of a new pilot project establishing a task force to provide simplified shopping for businesses that are interacting with CentrePort.

What will happen, ideally, is that the marketing efforts that are currently underway will draw companies of any and all kinds to CentrePort’s campus to take advantage of its central shipping location by setting up warehousing and storage facilities, final assembly and shipping, or even primary manufacturing through to shipping operations. If a company ships product, it is a potential tenant of CentrePort, plain and simple. Hawkins emphasizes that Standard Aero has already announced its new plant on the campus and that Canada Post has moved its Western Canadian-Manitoba handling facilities from downtown to the airport.

CentrePort hopes to sweeten the pot even more for import and export in the future by becoming designated as Canada’s first foreign trade zone (FTZ), which would enable it to provide special customs procedures for international trade-related activities. Duty-free treatment would be accorded items that are processed in and then re-exported, and duty payments deferred on items until they are brought out of the FTZ for sale in domestic markets. That prospect too, is not much more than just a thought. As Gray told the Winnipeg Free Press shortly after her appointment, “Could a foreign trade zone be a competitive advantage? Absolutely. Is it part of our business plan? We don’t have one yet.”

Already, efforts to position Winnipeg as a shipping hub have begun to pay off, even through the current economic downturn. Winnipeg’s airport has actually seen increases in traffic over the past year, and it is one of the only airports in Canada that can make that claim, notes Barry Rempel, member of the CentrePort board, and President and CEO of the Winnipeg Airports Authority. “Globally, traffic is down about 16 per cent, but in Manitoba, we’re actually up by just under five per cent.”

For government at all levels, CentrePort means job creation–thousands, in Hawkins’ estimation—much of it in shipping and warehousing, naturally, but also in administration for those facilities, and perhaps even at the corporate level if companies taking advantage of CentrePort elect to relocate to Winnipeg.

For local business, Hawkins foresees tremendous opportunity in CentrePort because it plays to the city’s strengths. “We have a great manufacturing sector,” he points out, “and a great health research sector, for example, so this would not only be an add-on to what we already have, but a value-added opportunity (for Winnipeg business to use in marketing itself),” to say nothing of the potential for increased business in Manitoba’s already busy road transport sector.

Of course, the real opportunity for government, local businesses of all sizes, and for the people of Winnipeg lies in the economic ripple effect caused by all of the new manufacturing, shipping and warehousing activity and increased employment. “You can conceive of a whole lot of different opportunities,” emphasizes Hawkins, “and all of them would be generating jobs, tax revenue and economic activity—all under one heading: growth.”