Yes, we have a lot of new jobs in Call Centres, and for that we are extremely glad. However, the Call Centre jobs are not keeping our young graduates in Sudbury. They are leaving the area in epidemic numbers in search of careers in Southern Ontario and beyond. So this Labour Day, what are we going to celebrate? How are we going to commemorate the past advances and illuminate the future prospects of the labour movement?

Scott Mantle, the new chairman of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce, recently pointed out that "Sudburians have to become more creative if the area is to enjoy the same kind of economic progress now going on in the south." He was quoted in the August 20 edition of the Sudbury Star as saying that, "There is really nothing here at the moment that is going to encourage growth to take place. And what bothers me the most is that there seems to be this constant effort to maintain things as they have always been maintained. We have to get away from that."

Indeed, Mantle may well have hit the nail on the head. Business leaders, labour leaders and political leaders must toss aside the past and enter the world of the 21^st Century. We must take a look south and see what they have done to generate such a tremendous amount of economic development during the last decade. What will undoubtedly emerge as one of the secrets of the southern success is the willingness of the business, labour and political leaders to take risks and be creative. The way we did things in the past were fine in the past. But those ways will no longer work! We must do things differently, and we must be prepared to make decisions at breathtaking speed. No longer can we enjoy the luxury of waiting until we have all the answers before making decisions. We must weigh all the options we have at hand, and then make a projection of the options which may come at some time in the future, and then take action! If we are right, we will succeed. If we are wrong, we can make another decision later on. The important thing is to take action immediately and let the future determine itself.

Labour Day 2000 should be an opportunity for all of us to take a good hard look at where we are going. If we intend to create a dynamic future for the Sudbury area we must look forward, not behind. Only by setting our sites and goals on where we want to be will we have any chance of getting there. We must develop a vision of a future world which will be much different from the one we have left behind. And the world we are in today is merely a stepping stone to help get us closer to our destiny.

So on Monday, September 4, let us all take some time to reflect upon the past. Let us see how we can do things differently to generate economic growth in the Sudbury District so that our future here can be as good as it can be. Don’t try to hold onto the way things were done in the past. We now live in the world of the internet, where time stands still for noone and the moment of absolute certainty will never come.