That is the plan. Getting it in front of people costs money, and every dollar comes from a neighbour.
Chip inNext door in Champlain, 130 acres of industrial land sits bought, zoned and empty. The only thing between that land and real jobs is water and sewer. Ours. The two towns finally shook hands on paper in December. Here is how a builder gets the deal finished, the services in the ground, and this town back on an employer's map.
Behind the warehouse, the hotel and the gas station on Highway 17 East, there are 130 acres of industrial land. Bought. Zoned for industry under the Counties' own plan. Empty. The lot line sits in Champlain Township, a few hundred metres past our boundary, and there is exactly one place its water, its sewer and its road connection can come from. Here. Champlain's pipes do not reach it. Ours can. The land is ready. The pipes are the plan.
Industrial land pays property tax at roughly three times what a house pays on the same value. That figure is the outgoing mayor's own, said out loud to the newspaper this spring. My housing plan (Point 4) showed you a town that shrank for twenty years while almost every neighbour grew, dividing the same bills among fewer shoulders. Homes are half the answer. Employers are the other half. We sit halfway between Montreal and Ottawa, at the one road bridge over the river between them, with industrial land at a fraction of big-city prices. What we have never had is a serviced lot to show.
Ask how long Hawkesbury and Champlain have circled this and you get twenty years or thirty, depending which mayor is telling the story. Then, on December 17, 2025, the two councils signed a first agreement on paper. The shape of it is a fair trade between neighbours. The land north of the road, the piece with the industrial park on it, would join Hawkesbury. In exchange, Champlain's own land on the south side of the road gets to hook into our water and sewer, and stays Champlain's. Each town keeps the taxes from its own side. Both towns keep their names, their councils and their tax bills. You do not join two houses to share a waterline. You write down who owns the fence, and you get digging.
The first agreement set a target of April 30, 2026 for the final, binding one. That date has come and gone, and as of the end of August 2026 the final agreement had still not been signed. I am not pointing a finger. Two councils, two sets of lawyers and a provincial rulebook make for slow carpentry, and the people who got this file moving after a generation of nothing deserve credit, on both sides of the road. But I have run enough jobs to know what happens to a deadline nobody is watching. It slips once, quietly. Then it slips for good. This one lands on the next council's desk. I am asking for the job of catching it.
Before this town can promise one new pipe, it has to prove its plants can carry the load. In May, council bought that proof: a $109,199 study of our water and sewer capacity, shared with Champlain, done by the same engineering firm that already knows our system. The study measures what our treatment plants can handle at full build-out, finds the choke points, and prices the upgrades. And it feeds the one document this whole plan hangs on: a provincial environmental permission the Town must hold before new servicing can be promised. That is the real critical path, and it runs through paperwork before it runs through the ground. The same plants that would serve the park are the plants that serve every new home. Point 4 waits on the same answer. Whoever is mayor when that study lands had better be someone who reads an engineering report the way other people read a menu.
A consultant's estimate for pipes and pumping lands on the council table. I can pick up the phone and get a real second quote to check it against, the same way I promised on the housing page. To check the bill, and nothing else. How the Town buys stays with staff, under the rules, in public. A town that cannot check a number pays whatever it is told, and on a job this size the difference is not pocket change.
The federal government and the province are putting serious money behind Canadian manufacturing and defence work right now, and that money will land where a serviced lot is ready for a shovel. It will not wait for a town that is still negotiating with its neighbour. Down the 417 in this same county, Russell Township asked the province and got $1.5 million for its own industrial park. Asking works. Ready wins. The people planning the park told their annual meeting this spring the kinds of employers it is drawn for: agri-food, logistics and storage, durable goods, metal fabrication. Real payrolls, the kind our young people leave town to find. My youth plan (Point 3) builds them a door into town hall. This plan builds them a reason to stay that pays every two weeks.
The Town's own draft plan says Hawkesbury does not need more land zoned for jobs: it counts about 63 vacant hectares inside the town line and ten hectares of need to 2046. That is a fair point. It is also not an argument against this file. The park next door is serviced land at the highway, already bought and already zoned, and the land inside our line is mostly small, scattered lots. A town with both has one thing to sell instead of two: one offer, our pipes, every serviced acre in the area on the same page. That is what I would put in front of an employer.
And the offer has to be written down before the first employer calls. The Town's own incentive plan stops at the edge of open land, which is exactly where the park sits. Bringing the park inside it takes a public meeting and a council vote, and I will ask for both in my first budget year. The same terms for every employer, decided in the open.
And somebody has to sell it. I have spent thirty years building businesses between Montreal and Ottawa, and I will put my own network of businessmen and organizations on Hawkesbury's file, starting with the people already building along this corridor. A town this size wins by pulling in the same direction, and a file this old has partners on it who deserve to hear the Town's next move from the Town.
Every promise on this page comes from the left column. If you ever catch me promising from the right column, hold it against me.
I cannot name the employers who will come, because I do not know yet, and anyone who says they do is selling you a rendering. I cannot put a jobs number on a field that does not have a waterline. Nor will all 130 acres turn into factory floors. Every site I have ever worked gave up ground to drainage, ponds and roads before it gave up one lot, and a builder who tells you different has never drained a field. I cannot promise the final agreement is signed by a date I do not control, because two councils hold that pen, and I will be holding only one of the seven votes on one of them. What I can promise is to try for it at every meeting until it is signed. And I will not pretend every term of a deal negotiated behind closed doors is automatically good for Hawkesbury. I will read it like a contractor reads a contract, because that is what I am. If it is good, I will say so and push it through in the open. If a term is bad for this town, I will say that too, in public, and go back to the table. What I promise is the work, on a clock you can watch: the vote, the study, the application, the officer, and a straight answer every time something says no. A generation of talk built nothing on that land. Pipes will.
I have spent my life connecting buildings to services. Water in, sewage out, on budget, inspected, done once. This town has been one waterline away from a real industrial park for a generation, and the first paper is finally signed. What this file needs now is a mayor whose own trade is finishing. Give me the job, and the next time you drive past that field behind the highway, count the trucks.
Finish the deal. Build the pipes. Land the jobs.