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Prospectus
PROSPECTUS Could COVID-19 spark the regional economy?
The inaugural issue of Eastern Ontario Business Journal comes at a very unique time in our collective history, as COVID-19 disrupts our lives, threatens our health and undermines our businesses.
Like all crises, the status quo is interrupted. Old ways are falling by the wayside. People are reconsidering their priorities and making different decisions.
Could this bring about the biggest economic development opportunity that Eastern Ontario has seen in decades?
With the pandemic pushing most white-collar workers to work-from-home status, a generational shift is happening in the workplace. Instead of zooming down Hwy. 417 to Kanata business parks or downtown office towers, workers are Zooming into meetings with other geographically dispersed colleagues.
This newfound freedom has many reconsidering where they live. For a good number of Ottawans, this means moving to a small city, quaint town or a country estate.
Even in modest numbers, this migration could spark local economies across Eastern Ontario, communities that are eager for new residents, new spending and possibly new business investments.
There are multiple trends converging at once.
Start with Ottawa’s red-hot housing market. The average price of a single-detached home has broken through the $600,000-threshold, greatly outpacing median household incomes. First-time homebuyers are looking further afield to house their young families. Any increase to historically low interest rates could transform this migration trickle into a torrent, like the mighty Ottawa River in springtime.
Combined with the steady march of technology innovation – take software-as-a-service, secure cloud storage and virtual office phone systems as examples – an employee can be just as productive from their Prescott kitchen table as their Kanata office cubicle.
The missing part of the puzzle is ubiquitous high-speed internet access, perhaps now as critical as John A. Macdonald’s transcontinental railway of the 1880s. Even here, change is near. After years of modest progress in high-speed internet access, new technology is coming to market, like the low-Earth-orbit satellites from Ottawa-based Telesat in 2022.
Years from now, looking back, it’s possible the pandemic will be seen as the start of an economic rejuvenation across Eastern Ontario.
