Ranked as one of the country’s top ten cities for business by Canadian Business Magazine, Saint John is a city built on the spirit of entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity. (Canadian Business Magazine 2005, 2006, 2007)
As the largest urban centre in New Brunswick, Saint John has a diverse economy and workforce. Here you will find highly educated and skilled employees that are known for their strong work ethic. Coupled with the fact that Saint John has one the lowest operating costs in North America you will find Saint John at the top of your site selection list.
The fundamental business advantages in Saint John are essential to any operation:
Modern Transportation Infrastructure
Saint John provides favourable access to all Canadian provinces and major American cities located on the Eastern Seaboard, and direct links to Europe. The region’s efficient and reliable transportation networks include:
- one of the most active ports on the Atlantic Ocean;
- modern road infrastructure;
- three competing rail lines serving the northeastern United States and Central Canada; and
- an international airport.
The Port of Saint John
 Operated by the Saint John Port Authority, under the Canada Marine Act, Greater Saint John’s year-round, icefree, deep-water port is one of the busiest in Canada with over 27 tonnes in 2007. The Port of Saint John has some of the most modern and best-equipped terminal facilities in North America. Port Saint John’s central location provides access to major highways and railroads. Served by two railways, and numerous trucking firms, the Port’s specialized terminals offer high speed handling of containers, forest products and bulk cargo, including petroleum products, salt, and potash.
Our transportation infrastructure together with roll-on/roll-off capacity and other specialized cargo handling and storage facilities, makes the Port highly competitive in the North American marketplace. The Port also maintains excellent connections with Europe, North and South America, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean Basin and offers charter movements to all parts of the world. The Port also handles the city’s growing cruise ship traffic. In 2008, for example, there will be 81 ship calls carrying more than 185, 000 passengers and over 60,000 crew, a tremendous economic boost to the uptown area.
Tel: (506) 636-4869
Fax: (506) 636-4443
E-mail:
Web: www.sjport.com
 Highways
Saint John has one of New Brunswick’s highest concentrations of trucking firms with 20 resident trucking operations servicing the region. Daily overnight delivery is guaranteed to Boston, New York, Montreal, and Toronto. Saint John and the neighboring communities of Grand Bay-Westfield, Rothesay and Quispamsis are linked by a modern network of four lane highways, including Highway #1, New Brunswick’s highest volume commercial artery, often referred to as “The Atlantic Canada Free Trade Expressway”. Recent major improvements and construction on highways within the province are valued at over 1 billion dollars and significantly support faster and more economical four-lane highway shipping. Greater Saint John is only 110 km (68 miles) from the Canada-United States border at St. Stephen, New Brunswick and Calais, Maine (the fourth busiest Canadian international border crossing). This leads to Saint John having one of Atlantic Canada’s lowest trucking costs into the U.S.
Rail Lines
There are several companies that provide rail service to Saint John including Canadian National Rail (CN), NB Southern Railway (NBS), affiliated with Canadian-American (CDAC), Guilford and Canadian Pacific Rail (CP). These companies provide direct rail service to 75% of the city’s major industrial land with short and long haul capabilities. Saint John is a major hub in the railways’ rapid inter-city freight services that link local industry and Port Saint John to Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, as well as, to several major markets in the United States. It is the only city in Atlantic Canada with direct rail access to New England. Our rail networks link New Brunswick to markets throughout Canada and the United States. Saint John is ideally situated to service the northeast and mid-Atlantic United States and Europe by rail and plans are underway to build a new inter-modal distribution centre that will continue to enhance our rail infrastructure.
Saint John Airport
 New Brunswick is connected worldwide through regularly scheduled air service for both passengers and cargo. The Saint John Airport, situated 16 km (10 miles, 17 minutes) from the City’s center and approximately 14 km (9 miles, 13-15 minutes) from Rothesay and Quispamsis, is an integral link in Atlantic Canada’s air transportation routes with the rest of Canada. With regular daily routes to the world’s market most routes are direct with travel time only a few hours away from 75 million customers.
By air, Saint John is approximately 30 minutes from Halifax, 60 minutes from Boston and 75 minutes from Montreal. There are direct daily flights to Montreal, Toronto, and Halifax.
Airlines served by Saint John Airport:
Air Canada
Telephone: (506) 632-1500 or 1 (888) 247-2262
Web: www.aircanada.ca
Westjet
Telephone: 1-888-937-8538
Web: www.westjet.com
Sun Wing
Telephone: 1-800-761-1711
Web: www.sunwing.ca
Others, (Charter, Military, etc.), are available.
Saint John Airport
Telephone: (506) 638-5555
Web: www.saintjohnairport.com
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Affordable Real Estate
 The economic development team at Enterprise Saint John works to provide you with the information for timely and well-informed business investment decisions. Once you have added Saint John to the top of your list we will work with your specifications to identify real estate options and organize site tours to make the most of your visit to the region.
Office
Prices have remained relatively stable for a number of years. Between January 2000 and January 2007, a number of very large customer contact centres occupy much of the space that is included in the Class C portion of the Office Market Survey for Saint John produced by Cushman Wakefield and LePage.
There has been a large addition to Class “A” buildings over the last few years. The major increase has been in the continuing renovation of the Centre Beam Heritage block on King St. Also, the law firm Gilbert McGloan Gillis relocated from the Mercantile Centre to King St in 2005. The firm purchased and refurbished a beautiful uptown Heritage property to house its offices. This is a trend that Saint John is experiencing throughout many of the class “A” and “B” office buildings. The trend to move into refurbished uptown Heritage properties is in line with the ongoing downtown redevelopment and the plans for future expansion opportunities on the waterfront.
One shining example of the move to heritage buildings for office space is CenterBeam Place. It’s anchor tenant is San Jose, California-based CenterBeam. The IT firm expects to grow to over 350 employees.
Industrial
 Saint John is home to three major Industrial Parks, two of which have a variety of excellent industrial development sites ranging from 1 to 500+ acres. All of Saint John’s industrial parks are fully serviced (power, water and sewage) and are easily accessible from Highway 1, the Port of Saint John, and two strategic North American rail links (Canadian National and the NB Southern Railway). McAllister Industrial Park and Spruce Lake Industrial Park are designed to accommodate virtually any type of light or heavy industrial operation. Saint John Industrial Parks’ land and development costs are extremely competitive.
Saint John Industrial Parks Ltd. (SJIP) is a wholly owned company of the City of Saint John. SJIP manages and facilitates land sales, continuously works on infrastructure development and improvements of the parks and enhances the potential of existing and undeveloped properties by pursuing innovative programs aimed at making businesses in the parks successful.
Our local developers and construction industry have built Atlantic Canada’s largest industrial infrastructure, including Canada’s largest refinery, numerous state-of-the art pulp and paper plants and a growing number of packaging, metalworking, food processing and plastics manufacturing facilities. Local developers and construction companies are recognized for their ability to build a quality industrial product with a quick turn-around at a reasonable cost. Serviced land is available at competitive rates.
CONTACT:
Brian Irving, General Manager
Saint John Industrial Parks Ltd.
Phone: (506) 658-4418
Email:
Industrial Construction Costs
Construction costs for a basic pre-engineered industrial building in the 40,000 sq. ft. range (including mechanical, electrical and site preparation, but excluding land costs) can be as low as $30.00 - 50.00 per sq. ft. with base rents on a lease-back ranging from $5.50 to $6.50 per sq. ft. depending on the terms and conditions of the lease. Cost estimates are based on a basic, but finished, industrial building, including foundation but excluding offices, site preparation work and landscaping/paving.
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Sophisticated Information and Communications Networks
Saint John, New Brunswick has emerged as a world-class location for customer service, technical support, remote development, shared service and back office information and communication technology (ICT) operations. There is a rapidly growing cluster of over 50 diverse Information Technology (IT) companies specializing in e-commerce, software development, remote network management, technical support, multi-media and state-of-the-art Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) applications. As one of North America ’s leading high end contact centre and back office locations, Saint John employs over 6,000 people in 25 centres supporting diverse clients around the world.
The last five years have been a period of exceptional economic growth in Saint John with the new arrival or expansion of major multinationals such as CenterBeam, Exigen, Xerox, IBM, Alcatel, Aliant, Bell Canada, Wyndham Worldwide, Unilever, ExxonMobil, ClientLogic, Iron Mountain, TD Insurance and Stream. This expansion was driven primarily by the region’s dynamic, innovative and increasingly global ICT sector and the region’s skilled and qualified workforce.
To support the region’s growing IT sector, propelsj was initiated by industry to support new business starts and expansions through its Launch32 initiative and an innovative virtual technology incubator.
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Unparalleled Workforce
 Devoted, motivated and highly educated is how we describe our workforce. Saint John, New Brunswick like many other small North American centres has seen its economic base change significantly over the past 10 years; from a traditional manufacturing base, the region has transitioned to a much more diverse knowledge-based economy.
Since 1996 the unemployment rate has dropped from 12.1% to 6.6%. The Information and Communications Technology sector in Saint John employs 8,000 people and is conservatively expected to grow significantly. The manufacturing and construction sectors employed more than 9,000 people in 2004 – an increase of 5% over the previous year.
Some of our region’s workforce statistics:
- Saint John boasts one of the largest and fastest growing bilingual populations east of Quebec (18,500 strong);
- 2006 Total labour force 15 years and over: 56,400
- 2005 Labour Force Annual Average Income: $28,450;
- Our workforce is well educated with the population 15 years and over:
- 3.7% have a trades certificate or diploma;
- 23.5% have some college educations (18.7% of which have a diploma or certificate); and
- 25.2% have some university (12.8% of which have a bachelor’s degree or higher);
- The diversification of the workforce by industry (2006 Census Data):
- Retail & Wholesale 17.8%
- Manufacturing & Construction 14.2%
- Education 5.7%
- Health Care 13%
- Administrative & Management 9%; and
- The average unemployment rate for 2006 was 8.6%
New Brunswick, as a province, is renowned for the following trends:
- One of the lowest rates of worker-initiated turnover in Canada - less than 10%;
- New Brunswick workers remain in their jobs twice as long as the Canadian average;
- On average, 65% of residents have been with their current employer for more than four years;
- Low absenteeism rates, with only 7.3 days lost per worker per year and as much as 20% less than Western Canadian provinces; and
- 66% of New Brunswick’s population is under the age of 45.
Enterprise Saint John has two programs aimed specifically to work with existing business in our community; Workforce Expansion Initiative and Labour Force Development.
Saint John has developed an excellent learning environment and has a network of education and training facilities that work with the business community to meet the labour market needs. New Brunswick’s four universities, nine community colleges and over 100 private training institutions are well known across Canada for providing high quality education to over 35,000 students.
Universities
Throughout New Brunswick, 18,000 full-time students and 4,700 part-time students attend the four prominent public universities annually. These universities offer a variety of educational programs such as information technology, health sciences, engineering, forestry, marine biology, law, arts, and social work.
 UNB Saint John, a campus of the University of New Brunswick established in 1969, offers a wide range of undergraduate courses, and is international; with students hailing from over 40 countries, programming offered in Beijing, Cairo and Trinidad and the student abroad program our students are truly keeping pace with the world. UNBSJ is also the first university in North America to offer a graduate and undergraduate degree in electronic commerce.
New Brunswick Community Colleges
 New Brunswick’s ten community colleges provide technical and industrial training of the highest quality. More than 100 regular training programs, plus a selection of industry-oriented, short-term training services are available.
NBCC Saint John is the largest of the provincial network and offers a range of programs from technology and machinery to electronics, computer science and graphic design. Our college works with business and industry to ensure a skilled workforce for tomorrow.
Through industry partnerships New Brunswick ’s private training institutions, universities and colleges will develop specific courses and training programs to match workforce requirements.
Resources for Employers When Hiring
Employment Agencies – Saint John
Adecco Employment Services
Advantage Personnel
Devine Associates Incorporated
Executive Services Plus Ltd.
Kelly Services (Canada), Ltd.
Manpower Professional
Personal Search
Robertson Surrette
Job Banks
New Brunswick Job Futures
New Brunswick Job Futures is a career planning tool. Its purpose is to provide occupational information and provide the reader with reliable and current labour market conditions with an aim to enable persons in their personal and professional career development.
Saint John / New Brunswick / Canadian Newspapers On-Line
Canada East (NB Newspapers): www.canadaeast.com
Fredericton : www.dailygleaner.com
Moncton : www.timestranscript.com
Saint John : www.telegraphjournal.com
L’Acadie Nouvelle, NB Francophone: www.acadienouvelle.com
Le Saint-Jeanois, Saint John Francophone: www.arcf-sj.org/saint-jeannois/
The Globe & Mail: www.theglobeandmail.com
Human Resource Contacts
Service Canada (formerly Human Resources and Skills Development Canada )
211 Waterloo Street
1 Agar Place
Saint John , NB E2L 4V4
Phone: (506) 636-4595
Fax: (506) 636-3808
Web Site: www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/home.shtml
Department of Post Secondary Education and Training
1 Agar Place
PO Box 5001
Saint John , NB E2L 4Y9
Phone: (506) 643-7258
Fax: (506) 643-7443
Web Site: www.gnb.ca/0105/index-e.asp
Additional Websites
SaintJohnLifeOnYourTerms.ca
A dynamic resource that showcases our community, where you are free to live the life that is true to you.
Labour Market Information
Answer your questions about jobs, skills and the availability of workers in local areas across Canada . Also provides information on wage rates and job descriptions.
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