Retooling local economies: Practitioners’ experiences with and perspectives on plant closures in Ontario

ABSTRACT

Since the early 2000s, plant closures have been a significant concern in Ontario, Canada. Scholars and policymakers alike aim to investigate the causes of plant closures and determine how to mitigate their impacts. Despite the large body of literature on plant closures, local economic development practitioners’ perspectives and experiences have been neglected. To fill this gap, this paper interviewed twenty-two practitioners from various cities in Ontario to understand how practitioners perceive and respond to plant closures. The findings provide a comprehensive overview of the various dynamics of plant closures. Also, based on the findings, seven policy recommendations are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Plant closures
• Manufacturing
• Local economy
• Practitioners
• Ontario

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Correction

Acknowledgement

This paper is part of a larger comparative international project on plant closures and community responses in Ontario and Michigan. Funding for the project is provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The authors would like to thank the participants (i.e., senior local economic development practitioners) of the study. We are grateful to Judith Sutton and Ruby Dhillon for their comments on the initial version of the paper. Also, we would like to thank the editor of the Journal, Cristiana Rossignolo, and two anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments and helped to improve the initial version of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2024.2313939).

Notes

1. While this study was undertaken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is worth noting that the pandemic has had a substantial impact on the manufacturing industries in advanced economies. Initial estimates suggested that the pandemic affected nearly 1.3 million manufacturing jobs in the United States (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020) and at least 280,000 jobs in Canada, 110,000 of which were located in Ontario (Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, 2020; Statistics Canada, 2020). The permanence of these losses is still to be determined.

2. Despite strenuous efforts, practitioners from several large localities were not interviewed as they did not respond or accept the invitations to participate in the study. For instance, practitioners from Toronto and Ottawa did not respond to the multiple invitations to participate in the study.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2018-0857]