November 2020
Your monthly news & updates
Four announcements by SWIFT in November
  • SWIFT Announces $19M In Broadband Improvements For Essex County. The newly awarded projects will collectively service 207 kilometres of underserved roadway throughout Essex County to bring high-speed internet to 3,687 homes and businesses within the municipalities of Essex, Kingsville and Leamington.

  • SWIFT Announce New Broadband Services in Norfolk County. Execulink Telecom has started to roll out fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband service in the Turkey Point area. Construction of the newly established fibre network is expected to be completed by December 2020.

  • SWIFT Announces $16.9 Million in Broadband Upgrades for Grey County. The projects represent a collective total investment of $8.1 million and will deploy fibre cabling along 110 kilometres of underserved roadway to deliver improved high-speed services to 1,904 homes and business by mid-2021.

  • SWIFT to Bring High-Speed Broadband Service to 5,200 Households in Bruce County. The newly awarded projects will collectively service 69 kilometres of underserved roadway to bring high-speed internet to 3,247 homes and businesses within the municipality of Northern Bruce Peninsula and the Town of South Bruce Peninsula. The projects represent a collective total investment of approximately $6.4 million and will be completed with service available by mid-2022.

Trillium GIS Platform provides information about more than 6.000 manufacturers throughout Ontario
TrilliumGIS ( https://trilliumgis.ca/map ) provides information about more than 6,000
manufacturing establishments in the province, ranging from large motor vehicle and aircraft assemblers to craft breweries and wineries.

The open-access platform is available to the general public, but is especially useful for specific audiences. These audiences include manufacturers themselves, as they seek to identify potential customers, suppliers and partners, as well as economic development officials at all levels of government, educational institutions looking for co-operative education and work-integrated learning partners, and site selectors looking for promising locations for new manufacturing investments.
New Webinar Series - Building Momentum Forum
The Southwest Ontario Tourism Corporation (SWOTC) and their Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) want to continue to support the tourism industry in navigating through, and planning for, the future. Together they are launching the digital ‘Building Momentum Forum'.


Upcoming Forum Sessions Include:

·       How To Plan and Execute Great Video Content - Thursday Nov 26, 10am
·       Winter Travel Preferences Research - Tuesday Dec 8, 10am
·       Destination Repositioning, Best Practices - Tuesday Jan 12, 1pm

Ontario Support for Businesses

The month of November has seen a number of supports for businesses announced by the Government of Ontario. These include;



  • Ontario Supporting Small Businesses with Financial Advice and Training. The Ontario government is investing over $2.2 million through the Ontario Together Fund to provide small businesses with free, tailored financial advice and online training to help them make informed financial decisions and navigate the unprecedented economic circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

  • Businesses: Get help with COVID-19 costs. This webpage is dedicated to helping find out if your business is eligible to recover costs for personal protective equipment (PPE) or for rebates to help with fixed costs, such as property tax and energy bills.

  • Province Proudly Promoting Ontario-Made Products to Spur Economic Recovery Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME), with the support of the Ontario government, is launching a new Ontario Made Consumer Directory. This guide will make it easier for shoppers to find made-in-Ontario products, while supporting local businesses and manufacturers. By promoting Ontario-made products, this initiative will support good-paying jobs and set the province down the path to further growth, renewal and long-term economic recovery.
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Rural Rebound Case Studies
Oxford and Grey Counties Featured
In order to accelerate a rural renaissance from Covid-19, ROI is collecting, curating and sharing stories featuring positive examples of innovations drawn from across rural Ontario. They have also selected several initiatives for a deeper dive in the form of “case studies”. 

Each of the featured case studies includes a link to watch the complete interview and a written summary of the interview. ROI specifically probed to highlight what might be transferrable for others looking to do similar projects and adapt them to their own context.

Two of the WOWC region member County's are featured; Supporting Oxford: a project created with collaboration and love and The Future of Workers in Rural Ontario featuring Grey County.

Ontario Opens COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream for Municipalities
Ontario is now accepting applications from municipalities for local infrastructure projects under the new Local Government sub-stream of the COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure stream to allow local governments to proceed with tendering and procurement as soon as possible.

Ontario announced up to $1.05 billion in federal-provincial funding through the COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure stream under the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) to build or renovate health and safety-related projects in long-term care, education and municipalities that will help Ontario respond to the impacts of COVID-19. This includes up to $250 million for the Local Government sub-stream that will help municipalities to address critical local infrastructure needs.
 

Government of Canada invests in Windsor-Essex businesses to spur growth
With a diverse workforce and strategic positioning at a major border crossing, Windsor-Essex is home to many manufacturers that are diversifying the regional economy—from traditional and innovative automotive parts, to new drug therapies, to agricultural solutions and beyond.

The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for FedDev Ontario, along with Irek Kusmierczyk, Member of Parliament for Windsor–Tecumseh, announced a total FedDev Ontario investment of $6.3 million to support the scale-up and growth of four leading manufacturers in Windsor-Essex: Pancap Pharma Inc., Crop Defenders Ltd., Hawk Plastics Ltd., and Whitfield Group.


Small Businesses across southwestern Ontario are still the priority for Government of Canada COVID-19 Loan Fund
If you own a local business in rural western Ontario, you now have access to repayable loans up to $40,000 through the 21 Community Futures Development Corporation offices in the region.

The Government of Canada will provide an additional $600 million to support workers and businesses through RRRF. This additional investment brings the total RRRF support to over $1.5 billion, helping businesses and organizations weather the impact of COVID-19.

The second round of the Regional Relief and Recovery Fund (RRRF) provides rural businesses and communities with access to capital and technical support. A total of $16,840,000 million of the overall $600 million fund has been allocated for the CFDCs across the western Ontario region to distribute to qualifying businesses.