Mike Corker has no issue with with the objectives: preserving employment, land for manufacturing, all in favor of that.

By Pepper Parr

January 14th, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

Mike Corker told City Council earlier this week that he has lived in Burlington since 1981.

Mike Corker: a tech entrepreneur.

He is  a tech entrepreneur, owns a software company in Burlington, is a real estate owner and is the President of Halton Condo Corp, which is a property at Walkers and Mainway.   He is the founder and executive director of M Tech Hub, which is an association of 400 Canadian manufacturing companies working on digital initiatives. He is a board member of the wood manufacturing cluster of Ontario, which is a group of manufacturers, small to mid size, manufacturers in Ontario.  He is also an active in European Union (EU)  clusters for manufacturing. He certainly has a strong background.

To speak on the issue of what we’re doing with lands.  We we looked at the core objectives for the PPS, and we’ve got no issues with with the objectives preserving employment, land for manufacturing, all in favor of that. But let’s look at at some impact here.

Specifically warehousing. We have 30 high tech manufacturing or high tech employees working at Walkers and Mainway, the implication of the zoning, if this was changed to warehousing only, would result in us going from a land use of 30 high tech employees to three forklift drivers, minimum wage forklift drivers in the same land use.

In terms of employment density, in terms of the kind of jobs we want in Burlington, there’s a lot that this policy is going to move, in my opinion, in the wrong direction. Where is employment growth happening? Digital AI, you know, that’s where all the job growth is. It’s not in warehousing. If we look at somebody like Amazon, you know, who’s serious about it? They put in 5 million square feet up in Hamilton. Their cost to operate warehousing picks is probably 30% of any operation that’s going to happen on Mainway. So there’s no warehouse on Mainway that’s going to be cost competitive as a warehouse when you’re competing with the digital the automation and the investment that people like Amazon made in terms of operating warehouses.

Okay, so there’s employment growth. You can see Meg seven up 250% US manufacturing, which is relatively comparable to Canadians, but has been flat for decade. . So talked about Amazon, their investment in robots, conveyors, automation. They are a world class leaders at this. They do 400 picks per hour per worker. You know the best warehouse on Mainway is going to do 60. So the scale and the costs of what you can do in smaller spaces in the employment lands, in Burlington are not going to be cost competitive with with operations like this.

Warehouses are all consolidating. They didn’t automate, couldn’t scale, the cost too high. What’s for lease on Mainway right now:  warehouses, large warehouses: 3100 Mainway has been listed for 560 days. They can’t fill it.

So what happens with warehouses?  

So what happens with warehouses?  Relatively short term leases. People can abandon them, get consolidated, easy to move out. So there’s very low switching costs for a warehouse, so they’re not a great impact on the community in terms of long term jobs or strategy they come and go.

K shaped economies, we all know that the growth is happening on the digital, high skilled AI sector of the economy. That’s where all the job growth is. What’s  taking place? manual labor, unskilled work, is negative growth.

Burlington, in my opinion, wants to be pitching land use? We want to be on the digital, high tech, high density side.  These are the jobs you get in warehousing. It’s nights and weekends work, it’s 20 bucks an hour, it’s it’s a job that is not going to enable someone to actually live in Burlington. So there’s going to be a commute to get there.

I don’t know why we want to protect those kind of jobs when we could be working on the high tech scale jobs. In the European Union, they study all this stuff to death, and it’s 27 countries, any kind of zoning thing that you can think of. They already tried it, studied it, and looked at the impact zoning does.

Zoning on an industrial policy basis, does not work. What does work? Fostering networks to share challenges, which is why we started M Tech Hub, infrastructure and logistics streamlining, training, support, supply chain improvement. So if we’re talking about improving employment, those are the things that we need to be need to be focusing on.

Burlington Economic Development website has six key industries in Burlington. Four are not permitted in employment lands. Biomedical, clean tech, information, professional services. We can’t operate those in employment lands, even though they’re key industries in the city.

In terms of what does work? We’ve got innovation factory, we’ve got M Tech, we’ve got Executive MBA in digital transformation. We got a whole campus here focused on these kind of jobs that we’re saying cannot be done on employment lands in Burlington. Burlington has a lot of resources and a lot going for it. I just think there’s better opportunities to use the properties.

We’re running on 40 year old communications technology in Burlington. All along Mainway:  no fiber, no 5g.  If we want to encourage employment in the digital AI and ecommerce worlds we need to get proper infrastructure put in place to support those activities.

I get 5g on my dock at my cottage, I do not get it at Walker’s on Mainway .

I have a cottage three hours from here in the middle of nowhere. I get 5g on my dock at my cottage, I do not get it at Walker’s on Mainway. I live in Tyandaga  I don’t get 5g there. I go to Joseph Brant. There’s no 5g there. So that’s the thing I shared with BDC, like, we really need to get the digital infrastructure upgraded, which was my second question, the stats Burlington is bottom 10% connectivity. Where are you getting those stats?

Of all my employees, the only employees that don’t have fiber at their house are the ones that live in Burlington. I’m in two manufacturing facilities or more every week, and the only places you can’t get fiber is Burlington.

You walk around Burlington, you can see the cable boxes that have all been battered by the snow plows, wires strung across the street. In work from home, digital foundations for both residents and business owners really need better infrastructure.

Burlington is really falling behind in terms of giving digital access to workers, to residents, to businesses.  My biggest issue is, locking in warehouses on this land. It’s low density. It’s low paid. We are ignoring high paid high tech.  I think that’s the one thing I think we could swap that would make an impact on getting high paid, high density jobs in Burlington.

Rory Nisan: Ward 3 Councillor

Council members were struck with the amount of information Mike Corker passed along.   Ward 3 Council member Rory Nisan asked:  How much do we owe you.