The Blue Mountain Resort near Collingwood played host to the annual Ontario Professional Planners Institute conference in early October. With hundreds of professional planners from municipalities across Ontario, and industry stakeholders from across Canada, the conference provided a forum for a wide range of issues impacting the industry. From agriculture and urban forestry to leadership and ethics, the important issues facing the day-to-day responsibilities of professional planners were engaged during…

What should a small town do when the big factory closes, and the original reason for its existence starts to fade into a historical footnote? It's a problem that affects all Canadian cities, but one that especially threatens municipalities under 200,000, as the shift from manufacturing to information technologies continues. These and other towns can't afford to make strategic mistakes. The competition for capital and highly-educated workers is enormous, and…

The Canadian energy landscape is undergoing a period of great change, as the move from coal to renewables and the rapid pace of innovation is causing new strategies to emerge for providing power to communities across the country. An expert panel provided its outlook on how this new age of energy development will provide new private sector opportunities in the industry at an event hosted by the Toronto Region Board…