Environment companies in “sweet spot” according to Premier

Things have been busy on the ONEIA front in the past few months. At our recent Environment Industry Day at Queen’s Park, the Association released a joint report, written with Deloitte Consulting on what environment firms across Ontario see as the barriers to their growth – and what they need governments to do to address them.

The report, Time to Grow: Making Ontario’s environment industry a world leader at home and abroad took considerable committee and staff work to complete - but is a landmark for our members and our sector. For the first time, we have a rigorous document that supports our calls for logical government policies that benefit the environment, the economy and our industry. The Deputy Minister of the Environment, Gail Beggs, in her luncheon remarks prior to the afternoon roundtables at EID, called the report a valuable addition to the ongoing dialogue between industry and government. The Minister of the Environment praised the report in his evening remarks at EID, saying he looks forward to working with industry to begin to implement its recommendations. And the Premier, in his first-ever appearance at EID, said to the more than 100 companies in attendance that our firms are in the “sweet spot” of the current economy.

ONEIA’s Advocacy Committee will be following up on the report’s release in the next few months. Among other things, we will be:

• Briefing the Premier’s advisors on the economy and the environment
• Meeting with the Environment Minister to propose joint action on such issues as green purchasing and approvals reform
• Building on the committee of industry-leading CEOs that advised ONEIA on the research project, we will propose a similar contact group to meet regularly with the environment minister and others

To offer your advice and suggestions, feel free to visit the comments section of the ONEIA blog at oneia.blogspot.com or contact our advocacy committee chair, Bob Redhead, at info@oneia.ca.

Finally, let me offer a few words of thanks to those who made the report possible. The Ministries of Environment, Economic Development and Research and Innovation – that, together with the Ontario Centres of Excellence – provided substantial funding for the report. Our CEO advisory committee, who provided input at key points in the process. And members across the province who came to focus groups and completed the online survey to give us the feedback we needed to produce a solid report. Our work in the coming months will be a product of this support – and for this, we thank you.

Stay tuned to ONEIA in the coming months as we move forward on this initiative!