Q&A: Supporting Manufacturing and Economic Growth in Cobourg
The Northumberland Manufacturers Association (NMA) invited mayoral candidates to share their perspectives on the future of manufacturing and industrial growth in Cobourg. Their questions touch on some of the most important issues facing our local economy such as attracting investment and supporting infrastructure to workforce development and the cost of doing business.
Below are Nicole Beatty’s response to those questions and her vision for how Cobourg can support our existing manufactures while creating the conditions for new investment, good-paying jobs and long-term economic growth.
Learn more about the Northhumberland Manufacturers Association.
1. How will you make it easier for manufacturers to invest, expand, and create jobs in our municipality?
Manufacturing is an engine of Cobourg’s economy. Our manufacturers are among our largest employers, leaders in innovation and generous community partners. I want the Town to treat them accordingly.
Cobourg has an advantage that many municipalities do not: we own industrial land. That gives us an opportunity to be much more deliberate about how we attract investment and support the companies already here.
In my first 100 days, I will establish a Mayor’s Economic Advisory Table with manufacturing represented at the centre of it. I want manufacturers helping us identify where municipal processes, policies and costs are getting in the way of investment and where we can realistically fix them.
I am also recommending that Council establish a dedicated development concierge for major employment and industrial projects, giving businesses one point of contact at Town Hall to help navigate planning, building, engineering and other approvals. I also want Council to establish clear approval timelines for these applications. We also need stronger governance, service delivery and long-term planning for Northam Industrial Park and Lucas Point Business and Industrial Park. Through this it means we’re ensuring our available industrial lands are truly investment ready. That means having the information an investor needs available upfront: land availability, zoning, servicing capacity, utilities, transportation access, environmental information and realistic approval timelines.
I would also propose that Cobourg looks to assess whether eligible Town-owned industrial lands should participate in Ontario’s Site Readiness or Investment Ready: Certified Site programs. These programs are designed to help municipalities and property owners complete the due diligence investors need to make site-selection decisions quickly and help get investment-ready properties in front of potential investors.
London provides a strong Ontario example of what a municipality can do when it takes an active role in industrial development. The City owns and services industrial business parks and has an Industrial Land Development Strategy with a goal of maintaining a 10-year supply of vacant, serviced, market-ready industrial land. It deliberately targets sectors including advanced manufacturing, food processing, automotive, clean technology, aerospace, life sciences and research and development. Cobourg is obviously a different scale, but the principle applies: know what land you have, get it investment ready and actively pursue the industries you want.
Finally, economic development cannot happen from behind a desk. The Mayor, Council and senior staff need to be on the road actively selling Cobourg. I want us to have a targeted investment attraction strategy focused on businesses that strengthen our existing manufacturing base, including supply chain companies, engineering, advanced manufacturing, technology, research and development.
The goal is simple: when an existing Cobourg manufacturer wants to expand, or a new employer is considering Cobourg, I want us ready to say, “Here is the land, here is the infrastructure, here is the process, and here is the person who will help you get it done.”
2. What is your plan to ensure our municipality has the infrastructure and services needed to support industrial growth?
The total replacement cost of the Town's infrastructure assets is estimated at approximately $508.1 million. That number reinforces why infrastructure decisions must be long-term, disciplined, and tied to where we expect growth to occur.
For our industrial areas, we need to get more specific. We must understand not only whether water, wastewater, roads, and utilities exist, but the exact capacities available, where the bottlenecks lie, what upgrades are required, and the timeline for those investments. This data must directly inform both our capital plan and our economic development strategy. With limited industrial land left and ongoing discussions around servicing and environmental constraints near areas like the Lucas Point Industrial Park, knowing exact infrastructure limits is the only way to pitch the town to high-value employers successfully.
One of our biggest opportunities for future industrial growth is Cobourg East. The secondary planning process underway, proximity to the rail corridor and the future creation of the Nagle Road interchange create an opportunity to plan employment lands and the infrastructure serving them before development occurs.
Cobourg’s Official Plan update is also underway. The NMA and local manufacturers must be directly engaged in that work, particularly on employment land, land-use compatibility, transportation and servicing. Manufacturers know their operational needs better than we do. We should ask what land configurations they need, where transportation or servicing constraints exist today, what future power, broadband, and utility requirements they anticipate, and what could prevent an existing manufacturer from expanding in Cobourg ten years from now. Those answers should help inform the policies we put in place.
Belleville provides a useful Ontario example. The City acquired approximately 685 acres beside its Northeast Industrial Park and is now servicing those lands with water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to maintain a long-term supply of fully serviced, zoned industrial land ready for development. Cobourg is working at a different scale, but that is the kind of planning we need to apply to Cobourg East and our existing industrial parks.
Council also needs to wind down its reliance on Northam Industrial Park surplus revenues for general municipal purposes so those reserves can support the business park's long term infrastructure and capital needs.
Finally, we need to consider transportation as we plan for industrial growth. We need to move goods efficiently, which means protecting access to major transportation corridors and planning our road network around industrial growth. We also need to move people. Cobourg invests significantly in transit, but I continue to hear from manufacturers and workers that our current system does not always reflect the realities of shift work. I want the Town working directly with employers to map shift changes and employee demand against transit routes and service hours so that we can make the necessary modifications to our transit service to better support workers getting to work in a reliable and timely manner.
To summarize, we need to plan for industrial growth by improving service for our existing manufacturers and identifying the type of investment we want to attract. What land will it require? What water and wastewater capacity will it need? What electrical and broadband load? How will goods move in and out? How will employees get to work? What infrastructure needs to be built, and when? These are the questions that should be driving our planning decisions today, not questions we scramble to answer after a company has already chosen another community.
3. How will you address the cost of doing business in our municipality?
To keep municipal costs competitive while protecting local services, my approach would focus on three key areas: keeping the industrial tax burden competitive, ensuring development charges are transparent and tied to actual growth-related infrastructure, and reducing the municipal cost of getting a project from application to construction.
That last piece matters. A manufacturer can budget for a known fee. It is much harder to budget for an approval that takes months longer than expected. That is why the development concierge, clear approval timelines, and delegation of routine approvals I outlined earlier are also part of my affordability strategy. Time has a cost.
On property taxes, my commitment to service-level budgeting matters here, too. Rather than beginning each budget with last year's spending and adding to it, I want Council to examine what services we provide, what level of service we deliver, what those services cost, and whether there are more efficient ways to deliver them. Controlling the municipal tax requirement is ultimately how we manage pressure on residential, commercial, and industrial taxpayers.
I would also establish an annual competitiveness review with the Mayor's Economic Advisory Table. I want us to compare Cobourg's industrial tax burden, development charges, and key municipal fees with the Ontario communities we actually compete against for investment. If we are significantly out of line, Council should know why and determine what we can responsibly do about it.
For a manufacturer making a multimillion-dollar investment decision, certainty matters. They should know what the municipal costs will be, why they are being charged, how long approvals will take, and who at Town Hall is accountable for moving their project forward.
4. What will you do to help address the skilled labour shortage facing local manufacturers?
The municipality cannot solve the skilled labour shortage on its own. Still, we can demonstrate leadership by bringing the right partners together and addressing the local barriers that make it harder for manufacturers to recruit and retain workers.
I want the Mayor’s Economic Advisory Table, which I am proposing as a permanent advisory body rather than a short-term initiative, to identify our actual workforce gaps directly with manufacturers, then bring the appropriate partners to the table, including school boards, colleges and universities, skilled trades and training organizations, workforce development agencies and the provincial and federal governments.
Rather than simply saying we need more training, we should ask manufacturers what occupations and skills they struggle to recruit for today, what they expect to need over the next five and ten years, and where the training gaps are. From there, we can pursue partnerships around apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship opportunities, employer-led and work-integrated training, expanded skilled trades programming, and, where demand is sufficient, locally delivered or satellite training opportunities.
The municipality also has a role in helping employers and training partners identify and pursue provincial and federal workforce funding. The Town does not need to deliver the training itself. Our role should be to understand the need, convene the right partners, and help turn those partnerships into local opportunities.
But workforce development is about more than training. Workers need somewhere they can afford to live. That is why I strongly support Northumberland Workforce Housing and moved the motion in December 2025 to declare the Town-owned Furnace Street property surplus and direct it toward its purpose-built workforce housing project. I want to see more partnerships like this that connect economic development with our workforce's housing needs.
As I noted earlier, we also need to get transit right, so transportation is not another barrier to attracting and retaining workers.
In all of this, my underlying goal is to help address the skilled labour shortage facing local manufacturers by connecting training, housing, transportation, and employers, rather than treating each as a separate issue.
5. What is your vision for manufacturing and industrial development in our municipality over the next 10 years?
Ten years from now, I want manufacturing to remain an engine of Cobourg’s economy. Still, I want the sector to be larger, more diverse, more competitive, better served and better connected to the economic opportunities emerging around us.
One of the biggest is nuclear.
With the proposed Wesleyville project next door in Port Hope, the expansion of nuclear generation across Ontario and the growth of the province’s nuclear supply chain, our region has an opportunity to become a centre for the businesses and workforce that will support this sector for decades. Ontario is already identifying future gaps in nuclear manufacturing, engineering, supply chains and skilled labour. I want Cobourg and Northumberland to prepare now to fill some of those gaps, which is why I moved a motion asking Cobourg Council to advocate to ensure it is recognized in the engagement, planning and allotment of readiness investment and funding.
That means working with our existing manufacturers to understand where they can participate in the nuclear supply chain, attracting suppliers and related industries to our employment lands, and positioning our region as a leader in the workforce development and housing needed to support that growth. Nuclear should not be viewed only as a project happening next door. It should be part of our regional economic development strategy.
I would also like to see Venture13 mature into a stronger industry-facing innovation and workforce hub. NMA and Nventure are already trailblazing collaboration there, including through VFactory and other manufacturing initiatives. Over the next decade, I want Venture13 to support more of that work by connecting manufacturers with training, technology, applied innovation, funding opportunities, entrepreneurs, and research partners. We have already built the asset. Now we need to maximize what it can do for our economy.
Cobourg East is another significant part of that ten-year vision. I do not want to see it develop as disconnected subdivisions on one side and isolated employment lands on the other. We have an opportunity to create an ecosystem of responsible and sustainable residential and industrial growth where employment, workforce housing, services and transportation are planned together. Done properly, people should be able to live near where they work and safely walk or cycle to employment areas rather than every new job automatically creating another car trip across town.
I also want us to become much more intentional about the kind of industrial growth we pursue. Our future is not simply filling industrial land. It is building clusters around the strengths we already have and the opportunities coming to this region, including advanced manufacturing, nuclear supply chain, clean technology, automation, engineering and related professional services. The more those businesses buy from one another, share talent, and connect to local training and innovation, the more economic value stays in our community.
In sum, my ten-year vision is for Cobourg to be known as a creative and charming waterfront community with a sophisticated manufacturing economy that offers a healthy work-life balance: a place where established manufacturers continue to invest, new industries choose to locate, residents can find competitive, good paying jobs, innovation happens locally, and workers can train, live and build careers here. In my opinion, manufacturing should not simply be protected as part of Cobourg’s economic history. We should be building the conditions for its next generation of growth.
