By Benoit Labonté, president of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal A recently released study by Statistics Canada ranks Montreal first among Canadian cities in terms of industrial diversity. For the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, this is excellent news not so much for today as for the coming years offering tangible evidence of the remarkable creativity of workers and entrepreneurs in metropolitan Montreal. Montreal is one of the few metropolises in the world to be home to three high-tech sectors: aeronautics, information technologies, and life sciences. Of course this diversity would not be possible without the presence in Greater Montreal of four internationally renowned universities and more than one hundred research centres. Montreal is able to excel in many sectors partly because we are able to train skilled workers in each of them. | In addition to these key new-economy sectors, the Board of Trade wishes to point out that Montreal performs equally well, on a national scale, in the food services, research centre, multimedia, clothing, and cultural sectors fields in which creativity and a sense of entrepreneurship are important growth engines. It is now up to us to make the most of this diversity, for the challenge remains the same: achieving economic growth. Montreal has excellent foundations for establishing optimal conditions for the creation of new wealth and ensuring its companies can realize their full potential. And if we're all pulling in the same direction, there is every reason to be optimistic. |