If you own a home, or are thinking about buying a home, with a Burlington zip code, you may have heard our city referred to as a bedroom community. While we don't deny that there are plenty of people who live here but make their living in Toronto or Hamilton, we do want to question the negative connotations of the label. They seem to suggest that Burlington has no business infrastructure of its own, that everyone's going to Hamilton for a wedding rental, Brantford for their vehicles, or Toronto for their shopping.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is, Burlington has always had, and will continue to have, a strong economic base all of its own. We're the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe region, the place where Canada's heartland begins if you are coming up from the south. We're the last stop on the industrial highway for products manufactured to the north and to the east, a major transportation centre all of our own.

Not only that, we have not only light industrial companies currently in place, but further zoning which will allow further expansion in the near future. Again, our place within the Golden Horseshoe guarantees that business will be attracted in ever greater numbers to our location in the future. Executive recruitment services will be headhunting at corporations in the big cities in order to find suitable management for the plants and factories set up at Burlington locations.

In the meantime, what does the city have to offer today? Well, first of all there is the huge service industry set up to meet the needs of an affluent population. Everyone needs their mobile broadband, roaming Internet signals today, and where better to locate the main service station than at the center of it all. That, of course, is right here in Burlington.

The stores, shops, and services of our community also help to provide the support network the population needs. There are great places to shop, to eat, and to take the family to for entertainment. Again, the average income of the residents here guarantee that well run businesses will do well in the service area. Companies from accounting firms using Sage Software, BC developed but Ontario marketed, law firms, and retail will all do well.

And let's be honest, there is a lot of good that comes out of being labelled a bedroom community. Any local real estate broker can tell you that all it means is that the profile of the community goes up. As a result, so do home values, and then so does the money and the potential money pocketed by residents of our city. All in all, the future of business here looks bright indeed!