For Canadian companies who want a U.S. presence, I’m not sure that Buffalo’s physical proximity is necessarily all that important. It depends a lot on the type of company and industry, of course, but in general there’s a lot of reasons a Canadian company might want their U.S. presence to be near a more of a top-tier city, or in some cases in a U.S. region with lower labor costs and/or lower taxes than Buffalo (even though of course Toronto has even higher costs and taxes than Buffalo, it doesn’t mean companies wouldn’t want a better business environment for U.S. presence).

Labatt is an unusual case in that the Buffalo area is their major U.S. customer base which motivated having their 30-person U.S. marketing office be located here. No doubt there’s some Canadian companies who could be convinced to put a presence here, but with enough jobs to make a significant boost?

His article speculated about Toronto creative class types locating in Buffalo due to lower costs. But if they just want somewhere less expensive than Toronto, there’s plenty of Ontario possibilities closer than Buffalo - Hamilton, or Toronto’s exurbs.

If there’s a lot of economic benefit to Buffalo resulting from it being near Toronto, then why hasn’t more impact been happening over the past 20 years as TO has grown and WNY’s job growth stayed so weak? Florida might say that’s because government down here hasn’t taken proper advantage, but I’d be very skeptical of that excuse. Economic spin-off effects usually happen much more naturally, leaving governments to play catch-up and then find a way to take credit.