TOUCHDOWN: BOARD OF TRADE AND BEDROOMS

The suggestion that downtown Toronto could become a kind of sleepy bedroom suburb to the rest of the GTA (suburbs) was a key message with enough horsepower behind it to really drive media coverage of the Toronto Board of Trade's "Scorecard on Prosperity" report this week. So kudos to President Carol Wilding and her team for really putting some zing behind what otherwise can be pretty dry economic data and giving media a chance to sink their teeth into a strong counter-intuitive storyline. "Toronto a suburb? It's begun" informed the boldface Toronto Star headline. "Ontario a place to grow - at least in the 905" blared the Globe and Mail headline. In the National Post, President Wilding was quoted as saying: "In many ways, Toronto can actually be the bedroom community for the suburbs, which tend to be the stronger economic engine - and you would expect the reverse." It's all about taxes, the report noted, and the fact that corporations who locate in the GTA region are increasingly being lured out to the suburbs (as they have for quite some time) to locate their offices and operations in a more tax-friendly jurisdiction outside the City of Toronto. Wilding called the report's findings "a tale of two cities." She also conducted extensive radio interviews to get the message across about what Toronto needs to do to remain competitive.