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When a community’s major employer falters, the shock waves don’t stop at the plant gate. In small towns and regions across the country, mass layoffs and closures also affect contractors and suppliers, local services, municipal budgets and housing markets. 

The sector and location change, but the pattern is predictable.  

In Cape Breton, for example, industrial decline has contributed to out-migration and persistently high child poverty rates. The closure of a cornerstone pulp-and-paper mill in Chandler, Que., has been linked to mental health and family distress. In Hanna, Alta., real estate prices collapsed in the immediate aftermath of an accelerated coal phase out. In Houston, B.C., the closure of the Canfor sawmill in 2023 left the district with a $1.2-million budget shortfall this year — about 20 per cent of the district’s annual taxation income.  

Canada’s support systems focus primarily on the immediate needs of directly affected workers and employers, but communities themselves also need shoring up when workforce disruption suddenly alters the landscape.  

With shifting trade relationships, the global energy transition, and other structural trends increasing the risk of workforce disruptions, finding better ways to support communities susceptible to workforce disruption is an increasingly pressing policy challenge.  

What one factory closure tells us about building resilient communities Canada missing opportunities to build community resilience amid global realignment

What one factory closure tells us about building resilient communities

Canada missing opportunities to build community resilience amid global realignment

Over four million Canadians live........

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