Sudbury "on the right track," says McKenna.

• Author: Thompson, Jason
• Position: SPECIAL REPORT: SUDBURY

Greater Sudbury is on the right track. That's the message former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna spread at a gathering at Tom Davies Square in Sudbury Sept. 20.

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McKenna, who was also Canada's ambassador to the United States, is now the vice chair of TD Bank Financial Group. He told the audience of politicians and business and community leaders that education and technology is the key to thriving in a new global economy.

Referring to the city's three post-secondary institutions, Canada's first new medical school in 30 years (NOSM), and the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation, McKenna said Sudbury has done well for itself in terms of education, especially considering how bad things were 20 years ago during a period of high unemployment and a struggling nickel market.

"With the institutions that you have created within this community and with the massive investment of industry, you're creating more tools and more productive tools," McKenna told the media following his speech.

"What that will guarantee is that not only are your industries sustainable, but you're going to be discovering new ore bodies that would not have been profitable under old technologies."

With this, McKenna said the community will have a viable and sustainable mining industry for decades to come.

"People make the mistake of thinking Sudbury is just about the primary industries, the mine, the smelter, the refinery. There's some 300 companies around here that service these industries and that have all kinds of other technologies ... which are exportable around the world."

McKenna drew similarities between Greater Sudbury and New Brunswick, the province he led as premier for ten years.

"We saw, in a resource-based province, the loss of jobs because of technology--technology that was needed to compete with foreign markets," he said.

This created massive unemployment problems that pushed the province's jobless rate to about 17 per cent.

McKenna said he came to the conclusion that fighting global markets was impossible and that a marriage between education and technology could create an economic base in the province that would supplement, not replace, the resource sector.

While McKenna's speech focused on the good things Greater Sudbury has done in recent years, along with commending Mayor Dave Courtemanche and the community for a job well done, he warned that if the good times are going to continue, the city must not rest on its laurels.

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