Play nice and wait until everyone is in the water

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It took a hot grill to fire up the St. Thomas mayoral race.
Who could have imagined the pancake breakfast at last Saturday’s opening of Horton Farmers’ Market would have such lasting impact?
While Ald. Heather Jackson-Chapman and mayoral wannabe Mark Cosens flipped flapjacks, head cook, Mayor Cliff Barwick was elsewhere and now his toque is tussled because candidates for mayor shouldn’t attend events in an official capacity as candidates until nominations close, don’t ya know.
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Ontario looks beyond the struggling auto sector

Ford Canada St. Thomas Assembly Plant


Ontario’s auto industry is facing ongoing consolidation with the upcoming closing of a Ford Motor Co. plant in St. Thomas in 2011. Last year, General Motors Corp. closed a light truck plant in Oshawa. Auto analyst Dennis DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. in Richmond Hill, Ont., says Ontario’s auto industry has lost 50,000 jobs since 2006 and has been hurt by long-term structural change as well as cyclical issues related to the economy.

It is also becoming increasingly difficult to compete with lower-cost plants in parts of the U.S. and Mexico that are not unionized, he says. As a result, he expects Canada’s share of total North American auto production — virtually all of which takes place in Ontario — to drop to as low as 12% during the next four to five years from its current perch of 16%.

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