N.E., Maritimes back business corridor ‘Atlantica’ council aims to create economic partnership known worldwide

BANGOR – The creation of an economic powerhouse that combines northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes region was put on the fast track Friday after a council was created to make a longtime vision a reality.

Giving the moniker Atlantica to the region, business and economic development groups at a Friday meeting said they were sick of waiting for government and others to decide the region’s economic prosperity.

“What we are going to create is a common destiny,” said Brian Lee Crowley, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax.

Members of the Atlantic Regions Chambers of Commerce in Canada, Eastern Maine Development Corp., the Maine International Trade Center, and the state Department of Economic and Community Development, and other groups met in Bangor to accelerate the creation and promotion of Atlantica.

By next year, a summit of the states and provinces that make up Atlantica will take place, and, within five years, the world should know of its existence and economic value.

The urgency to create the regional economic development corridor comes after years of being ignored by provincial and federal governments that see other parts of their countries as being business heavyweights, said Neville Gilfoy, president of Progress Communications Corp. in Halifax.

Speakers at the meeting presented dozens of graphics that showed how northern New England and the Maritime Provinces have experienced low income growth rates, high unemployment and the out-migration of its people. Graphics were displayed that showed the areas of the United States and Canada where governments have placed their priorities, such as the southern United States and southern Ontario.

“Your governments do not give a … about you,” Gilfoy said.

For at least 25 years, dialogue between Canada and the northern New England states has focused on improving trade relations and dissolving borders that hinder economic prosperity, according to meeting participants.

What has been missing through the years was a coordination of the region to market itself as an economic driver in international trade, the speakers said. On Friday, the workshop participants decided it was time to stop talking about how Atlantica should be formed and actually create it. The attendees decided to empower themselves to make dramatic changes instead of waiting for others to do it for them.

“We’re connected at the hip,” said Gilfoy. “It’s just a silk thread that is the border, but we’ve turned it into a brick wall. But as you get up to it, the border dissipates. It doesn’t matter at all.”

Canada remains the leading trade partner with the United States, with almost $2 billion in goods and services crossing the border daily, according to Crowley. New England and the Maritimes share the same industries – wood products, fishing and aquaculture, biotechnology, energy and utilities, and agriculture.

The Atlantica region consists of 10.5 million people with $230 billion in gross regional product, according to Richard Coyle, executive director of the Maine International Trade Center. Since 2000, Canadian companies have invested $1.5 billion in Maine businesses, creating or retaining 5,000 jobs.

Combined, the region has economic benefits to which governments have not given much attention, attendees said. Among them, Halifax has the closest deep-water port to the European Union and Suez Canal shipping routes. The geography borders three economic regions that can be connected to Halifax through Maine and northern New England: the Windsor, Ontario, to Quebec City region, the Atlantic triangle of New York City, Albany and Boston, and the Appalachian states, Crowley said.

“We can make commerce come to us if we’re competitive,” he said. “There is nothing wrong with businesses coming together to make more money. You can bet your sweet bippie, baby, that it’s happening elsewhere.”

More than 300,000 trucks cross the Maine-Canada border each year and head to those marketplaces. The trucks travel mostly two-lane roads that are shared with bicycles and school buses. Obstacles to growing the region’s economy are the lack of a four-lane east-west highway that links Halifax to those regions through Maine and an interstate truck-load weight limit that is too low and needs to be raised, said Timothy Woodcock, a Bangor lawyer who is founder of the East-West Highway Association.

The council initially will include six economic developers from Maine and Nova Scotia. It then will branch out to include the other maritime provinces and northern Vermont, New Hampshire and New York.

Besides the council’s creation, an announcement is expected this month regarding the formation of a Halifax to Moncton, New Brunswick, to Bangor trade corridor, which Gilfoy said is one step in building Atlantica.