News

2025 Strategy to Councils for Review

6 January 2025

After a truly collaborative process that engaged over 1800 community members, the 2025 Waterloo Region Economic Development Strategy (WREDS) will be distributed to Regional & Area Municipal Councils as well as the Waterloo EDC Board of Directors for review. The WREDS Steering Committee and Working Group would like to thank the community for their time and input to help shape the economic priorities of our community moving forward. This strategy takes an unconventional and inclusive approach to align economic development efforts and provide an opportunity for collaboration across its five Pillars; Talent, Land Readiness, Scaling Local Innovation, Strategic Sector Support, and Quality of Life.

As part of the WREDS engagement, Regional Council instructed staff to develop a dedicated Talent Attraction, Retention, & Reskilling Plan. Deloitte was retained to conduct community engagement and develop the Talent Plan with recommended activities, partnerships and programs to bolster the community’s workforce.

For links to WREDS & the Talent Plan, as well as the engagement results supporting both strategies, please see the files listed to the right of the page.