Improving Canada’s competitiveness requires an ambitious, aggressive and innovative private sector, and chambers at the community level have a role to play in that process.

This week, the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce — as part of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce network — announced a major advocacy initiative (Top 10 Barriers to Competitiveness) will focus on harnessing the power of business and public policy to address the key barriers to Canada’s competitiveness and our national prosperity.

Working with our national chamber, we’ve identified 10 critical policy and regulatory barriers. Our chamber has struck task forces to address the issues relating to the skills crisis and the Ontario College of Trades.

Our volunteers are discussing how such things as immigration, aboriginal education attainment levels and apprenticeship reform can and will have long-term positive impacts on the workforce of tomorrow.

As we collaborate with the Canadian Chamber, we will continue to work toward establishing practical solutions toward a common goal: strengthening Canada’s competitiveness in a knowledge-based global economy so that our future prosperity and standard of living can be assured.

And so we will continue to call on our members, on governments, on labour organizations and educators to help us tackle and overcome these barriers.

The need for action is urgent. The standard of living of every Canadian depends on how well we respond to the challenge.

We must identify and implement real, tangible solutions for breaking down the barriers to our competitiveness and for creating more opportunities and greater prosperity for Canadian businesses and families.

Debbi M. Nicholson
president and CEO Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce