In a sometimes critical report, the Toronto Board of Trade's annual Scorecard found Toronto's key strength to be labour attractiveness.
"Toronto is fifth best on Labour Attractiveness and eleventh on Economy. Toronto’s strong finish in Labour Attractiveness has been consistent over the course of four consecutive Scorecards. Toronto's number one advantage continues to be its diversity; with over 45 per cent of the population foreign-born, it continues to lead all 24 metro areas. Population growth in Toronto, fuelled by immigration, is another strength."
"On the Economy, Toronto stays in 11th place, just as in Scorecard 2011, but has managed to narrow the gap with Canada's most successful CMA on this domain, Calgary. On the other hand, Toronto has made no progress against the US leaders when it comes to per capita GDP and productivity growth. Drawing on the analysis of Scorecards 2010 and 2011, we can cite Toronto's lack of capital investment as one of contributing factors to the CMA's consistently mediocre economic performance."
The report also recognized Toronto's strengths in some key industrial clusters.
"Overall, Toronto earns A or B grades on half of the clusters examined in this report, leading all metros on one cluster: Auto & Parts. Toronto also scored A grades on the Transportation & Logistics (ranked second), and Food & Beverage cluster (ranked third). Although Transportation & Logistics had a solid economic performance during the past decade, it is not relatively important to the industrial structure of the CMA. On the other hand, the Food & Beverage cluster has historically been a steady contributor to the Toronto economy. Toronto is strong in both the Finance and Bio-Pharma & Bio-Medical clusters, ranking fifth. Even with mixed results on ICT Toronto emerged as a B city among all metros. In the remaining clusters, Toronto showed weaknesses, but also opportunities. For instance, Toronto's C performance in Aerospace masks the fact that real GDP growth and productivity growth have been very strong."
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Original Source: Toronto Board of Trade