This is the conclusion of a part series.
Part I is available here: https://www.focusburlington.ca/wherearethejobs/
Part II is available here: https://www.focusburlington.ca/bedtapproaches/
Burlington faces a larger challenge with economic development and tourism. I am not opposed to tourism. Nor am I opposed to supporting start-ups and entrepreneurs. Small business is the backbone of the Canadian economy and deserves support.
The challenge is that the city is losing established employers and employment opportunities. Anyone who drives along Mainway, Harvester Road, or Fairview Street can see the evidence. This plays out against the backdrop of even potential larger job losses from the Trump tariffs which hangs like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the heads of residents, business leaders and politicians alike.
And every business closure represents more than lost jobs. It also means lost commercial and industrial tax revenue. When that revenue disappears, the burden increasingly shifts onto residential taxpayers.
In Oakville, residential properties account for approximately 84% of the municipal assessment base. In Burlington, the figure is approximately 88%.
The importance of commercial and industrial assessment becomes even clearer when we examine Halton Region’s tax ratios: Residential properties have a tax ratio of 1.0. Commercial properties are taxed at 1.4565, while industrial properties are taxed at 2.0907. In practical terms, commercial businesses pay nearly one-and-a-half times the tax rate of residential properties, while industrial properties pay more than twice the rate.1
Significant Policy Implications
These differences have important policy implications.
Oakville appears to place greater emphasis on preserving and expanding industrial and commercial employment lands. Its economic-development strategy focuses on attracting investment, supporting established employers, redeveloping employment lands, and creating long-term job growth. The results are visible both in employment numbers and in the proportion of municipal taxes contributed by businesses.
By contrast, Burlington’s economic development efforts appear increasingly focused on tourism, branding, entrepreneurship, and start-up support. Those initiatives have value. But they are not substitutes for attracting major industrial and commercial employers.
Discover Burlington’s website touts $512 million in visitor spending and the supposed 600 jobs that came to the community. However, details about the nature of those jobs are somewhat lacking:
In the August 2026 edition of the Burlington Independent (page 12), an article entitled “Economic Dev, Tourism merger” contains this quote from Anita Cassidy, the Executive Director of Discover Burlington: “Today’s visitor could be tomorrow’s investor, employee, entrepreneur or resident, and this is one of the opportunities we’re tapping into through the synergies that exist across tourism and economic development”.
So instead of actively going out and pitching Burlington to prospective businesses and corporations, the focus now appears to be on using tourism as a means of luring new prospective investors and employers. Certainly, this is a unique approach. It probably explains why the City of Burlington went to such great lengths earlier this year to land FIFA celebrations at Spencer Smith Park, an initiative that cost $160K:
However, the reality is that this approach stands in stark contrast to the successes of communities that have aggressively pursued major employers. Consider the City of St. Thomas. Its efforts to land the Vianode $3.2 billion battery plant and VW’s $7 billion battery gigafactory will result in a combined 4,000 jobs. And, while that is sinking in, consider that the St. Thomas Business Development Office’s budget for 2026 is $1,186,336.
https://www.stthomas.ca/common/pages/GetFile.ashx?key=ADhCAb3G
There is another problem. Tourism revenues are inherently variable and concentrated in sectors such as hospitality, restaurants, and entertainment. They fluctuate with economic conditions, weather, seasonality, and visitor demand. Retail employment is not only cyclical; its pay scales are also generally lower than those in industry or high-tech.
Start-ups present a different challenge. Most require years to achieve meaningful scale. Studies have shown that it can take four to seven years for a start-up to become truly viable. Many remain small operations with only one or two employees, while a significant percentage fail or never become profitable.
And many start-ups are not even brick-and-mortar operations. People operating home-based businesses may pay residential taxes, but they generally do not contribute to the commercial tax base.
Which brings us back to the numbers. If, according to Discover Burlington, 600 jobs have been attracted to Burlington, how does that square with data from the Region of Halton showing that Burlington has experienced virtually no real net employment growth since 2021?
The obvious implication is that we may be losing jobs faster than we are replacing them. Sadly, that experience may only get worse with the Trump tariffs.
Summary
If Burlington wants stronger employment growth, a broader commercial tax base, and a more robust and balanced municipal economy, it needs to ask whether the current priorities of Discover Burlington are actually aligned with those objectives
.
A good example is national defense spending. The Carney government has announced that it will be spending a record $63 billion on national defence in the 2025-2026 fiscal year. Over the next decade, the plan is to invest an additional $50 to $90 billion as Canada strives to reach a goal of 5% of GDP directed towards defense enhancements by 2035. The move to augment the country’s long depleted Canadian Armed Forces presents enormous opportunities for private sector employers. Simply, how will Burlington be pitching its advantages of an educated and skilled workforce, access to transportation markets, and land availability to defence contractors looking to expand operations?
Tourism, entrepreneurship, and start-ups can all play a role in a healthy economy. But they cannot compensate for the loss of established employers and employment lands, nor can they substitute for a serious investment-attraction strategy.
After a decade of reorganizations, mergers, governance reviews, and rebranding exercises, perhaps the most important question is also the simplest; namely, where are the jobs, and where are the employers?
- https://www.halton.ca/getmedia/9c18e160-d7a3-4e1c-a013-4bb721c28239/fn-by-law-no-18-26-2026-tax-ratios-and-rates-apr-2026.pdf ↩︎
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Burlington is very weak in Economic Development.|That means Perusing new investment and equally important investment retention.The federal and provincial governments are the best source of leads.They prefer to work with “combat ready”.Burlington is not high on their list.