While the ongoing trade battles between Canada and the United States could hurt some local manufactures, it also opens up new opportunities to attract manufacturers to the Quinte region.

Members of the Quinte Economic Development Commission meeting Tuesday heard that while the trade situation remains volatile, it has created new possibilities locally.

In particular, while European companies have long looked to Canada as a way to enter the American market, now American companies might look to Canada to avoid tariffs on their products from Europe.

QEDC CEO Chris King said the organization is getting some feedback from companies that a considering a wide variety of issues that might impact their long term plans.

“Most companies take a very long term approach when making an investment like this so the some of the short term tweets might impact them somewhat,” he said. “But long term we are trying to get some stability and clarity on trade.

“That will dictate what happens with some of these investments. We have seen in the past investment follows trade. So once the trade deals are finalized, I think you will see more investment start to happen.”

QEDC representatives will be at two major international trade shows in the United States in the coming weeks which will create opportunities to talk to both American companies and international ones.

King said noted the shows have a truly international audience, including from other parts of Canada, so the QEDC message will change slightly depending on which companies are being talked to.

“Obviously some companies need to be in Canada from a strategic perspective,” he said. “Those are the companies we want to get in touch with and tell them about the Bay of Quinte region.”

Business development officer Vicki Bristow Ferguson, who will be attending the trade shows, noted that many European businesses feel closer ties to Canada than the United States.

She said there is a shared heritage and history that is generally more similar between the Europeans and Canadians.

“Canada often seems to be a very good first landing for European companies looking to come to North America,” she said. “We really emphasis the cultural element because there is such a difference.

We do have to be concerns about trade wars, but that also means American companies want access to Europe and we can target those companies to come to Canada to access Europe.”

The Summer Fancy Food show in New York is one of the largest food processing shows in the United State, attracting more than 2,600 exhibitors from 55 countries.

The Institute of Food Technologists conference, known as IFT, is one of the largest food ingredient shows in the United States. The Chicago event has 1,200 exhibitors and more than 23,000 attendees.

In other business, members of the QEDC board were shown a new video for Elevate Plus, the group’s partnership with Loyalist College that aims to help unemployed and vulnerable Ontarians access employment in manufacturing.

The six-week program provides training in both technical skills and “soft skills” and helps manufacturing companies struggling to fill labour positions potential skilled employees.

King said they are hoping to compile a couple more interviews for the video, which currently features several recent graduates of the program talking about the influence it had on them.

King said the plan is to get the video out to the core audience of people Elevate Plus is designed to help, namely people who have a barrier to employment but who want to work and who would consider a career in manufacturing.

“They can see through the video real life examples of people who have gone through the program and received the skills and the training they need which has resulted in full time employment,” he said.

“A lot of them are doing very well moving up in their careers. So we are going to continue putting the programs out there. We have funding to continue through to March 2019 and hopefully we will receive funding to keep the program going past that.”

The ninth Elevate Plus group graduates on July 5 at the former Cox Library in Trenton and QEDC is recruiting for the next group, slated to start in August.

For those wanting to learn more about Elevate Plus visit the website.