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Emerging Stronger is the OCC’s economic agenda for Ontario, in partnership with the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.

Emerging Stronger is a five-year agenda aimed at facilitating Ontario’s growth and prosperity. It identifies clear and tangible actions required to ensure that Ontario remains the best place in the world to live, invest, and build a business.

Ontario faces a number of challenges. Debt and deficit remain high. Growth is likely to be sluggish for the foreseeable future. We do not trade enough with the world’s fastest growing economies. Core industries that were once essential to our prosperity are in transition. In some sectors, there is a lag between the skills that we have and those that we need to compete.

Despite the challenges, Ontario is well-positioned to succeed.

Ontario has made considerable progress across many fronts. The deficit is coming down. Health care expenditures are no longer outpacing GDP growth. Governments have made some key policy changes designed to help businesses grow, including the creation of a more competitive tax environment. Business and the post-secondary sector are collaborating more closely on the skills agenda.

However, as this document shows, there is much left to do across all five key priorities that we identified in Emerging Stronger 2012 and 2013. Further progress will require action from all players—governments, business, labour, the postsecondary sector, civil society, and so on. This document is firmly grounded in the belief that we cannot look to governments exclusively to respond to our economic and social challenges.

In this spirit, Emerging Stronger 2014 identifies actions that all players must take in order to help the province emerge stronger from this period of economic transformation.