Research Behind the Participation Plan

1. What Import Replacement Means

Import replacement is Jane Jacobs’s term for the process through which local enterprises learn to produce goods and services that their community previously purchased elsewhere. It begins with demand that already exists, then asks which needs local suppliers could meet competitively.

For Owen Sound, this means studying purchases in food, construction, repair, technology, professional services, equipment, household goods, and public services. The aim is to identify achievable openings for local firms, workers, co-operatives, and institutions. Successful producers can then use their accumulated skills and capacity to serve wider markets.

This is an opportunity-finding method grounded in evidence of demand, viable costs, capable suppliers, and good implementation.

2. Import Replacement and Import Substitution

In regional-development research, closely related work is called local import substitution. Joseph Persky, David Ranney, and Wim Wiewel examined it as a theoretical basis for local economic-development policy and described tools for identifying candidate industries, including local purchasing analysis.

This local approach differs from national import-substitution industrialization, which historically used tariffs and trade barriers. Owen Sound remains open to trade, tourism, outside investment, and specialized expertise. The objective is to develop competitive capacity where Grey-Bruce already has demand, useful skills, resources, or realistic opportunities.

Municipal procurement will remain fair, transparent, competitive, and consistent with applicable law and trade agreements.

3. How Local Economic Leakage and Multipliers Work

Economic leakage occurs when local spending quickly leaves the region to pay outside suppliers. A local multiplier describes the additional activity created when income is spent again through nearby wages, suppliers, and services.

Regional input-output analysis traces how industries purchase from and sell to one another. Import mapping can then identify large recurring purchases, gaps in regional supply chains, and opportunities that warrant closer feasibility work. Statistics Canada publishes input-output multipliers for estimating economic effects, while municipal records can provide a practical starting point for local procurement analysis.

The Participation Plan therefore proposes measuring outside purchases, capable suppliers, locally awarded competitive contracts, new productive capacity, and enterprises reaching external markets.

4. Capabilities and Related Diversification

Research associated with Ricardo Hausmann, César Hidalgo, and the Harvard Growth Lab shows that places tend to diversify into products and services related to capabilities they already possess. A new activity is more achievable when it can draw on existing skills, equipment, suppliers, infrastructure, institutions, and technical knowledge.

This supports beginning with fields related to Grey-Bruce’s established strengths: food, forestry, construction, repair, fabrication, practical services, and digital work. Training, shared equipment, and supplier relationships can fill specific gaps while building on existing foundations.

OECD place-based industrial policy similarly emphasizes aligning development with local capabilities and underused regional assets.

5. Community Wealth Building and Anchor Procurement

Community wealth building examines how municipalities and other durable local institutions can use procurement, employment, land, finance, and facilities to strengthen locally rooted economic activity. Institutions with steady purchasing needs are often called anchors.

The Participation Plan applies this through published purchasing forecasts, supplier information sessions, accessible procurement, practical contract sizes, and transparent measurement. These measures help competitive local suppliers prepare and bid while keeping procurement fair, transparent, and compliant with applicable law.

Preston is the principal municipal example. Its institutions analyzed where purchasing left the area, changed procurement practices, and developed suppliers. Preston City Council reports that procurement retained within the city rose from approximately £38 million to £112 million between its initial and later analyses.

6. Co-Production and Resident Participation

Political economist Elinor Ostrom used co-production to describe public services and community outcomes created through contributions from both public institutions and residents. Each contributes a different form of capacity: professional authority and systems on one side, local knowledge, time, relationships, and initiative on the other.

Owen Sound’s proposed geographic ward meetings, Local Representatives, resident proposals, shared stewardship, and community projects apply this principle. Professional responsibilities, safety requirements, collective agreements, and municipal accountability remain clear while residents gain organized ways to contribute.

The Ward and Local Representation Plan provides the durable civic structure for this participation.

7. Co-operatives and Local Institutions

Skills alone rarely create durable economic renewal. People also need access to finance, tools, workspace, training, technical support, markets, and organizations that can coordinate shared needs. Co-operatives, credit unions, community land trusts, schools, makerspaces, and supplier networks can provide parts of this institutional foundation.

Grey Bruce Makers can support shared tools, learning, repair, fabrication, and prototyping. Affordable Rural Communities can connect housing and land with workshops and productive livelihoods. The detailed rural-community article and interest list explain that opportunity further.

8. Local Digital Government Capacity

Modern digital-government research emphasizes skilled public employees, interoperable systems, reusable tools, open standards, sound data stewardship, and the ability to evaluate vendors. These capabilities reduce dependence on systems that are difficult to change or export from.

The Participation Plan applies these principles to locally operated AI, document search, transcription, reporting, and data analysis where practical. City control of records, secure processing, open formats, backups, disaster recovery, and employee verification remain essential.

Cloud services and specialists still have a useful role for occasional upgrades, independent review, and uncommon expertise. The Transparency Plan explains how the resulting records and performance information will be published.

9. Proven Examples of Local Renewal

These communities followed different paths and worked at different scales. Their shared lesson is that renewal can be pursued deliberately by developing people, institutions, productive capacity, local finance, supplier relationships, and dependable demand.

10. Sources and Further Reading

Local Economic Development

• Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities.
• Joseph Persky, David Ranney, and Wim Wiewel, “Import Substitution and Local Economic Development”.
• Statistics Canada, national and provincial input-output multipliers.
• Harvard Growth Lab, Atlas of Economic Complexity.
• OECD, Place-Based Industrial Policy.

Participation and Local Institutions

• Elinor Ostrom, “Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development”.
• Coady Institute, Antigonish Movement archive.
• MONDRAGON Corporation, official history.
• OECD, Italian industrial districts and small-firm collaboration.

Procurement and Community Wealth

• Preston City Council, Community Wealth Building and the Preston Model.
• Centre for Local Economic Strategies, How We Built Community Wealth in Preston.

Digital Government

• Government of Canada, Digital Standards and open standards guidance.
• OECD, Digital Government Policy Framework.
• Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, privacy, security, and compliance guidance for public-sector cloud services.

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