Translation Services in Mississauga – Economic Profile
Mississauga is Canada’s sixth-most populous municipality with a population of more than 700,000. It is located in the western part of the Greater Toronto Area adjacent to Lake Ontario.
Mississauga has a very dynamic and diverse economy composed of more than 18,000 companies in a broad range of sectors whose size varies from corporate head offices to corner store retail businesses. Four business sectors – wholesale trade, retail trade, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing – make up approximately half of business and employment positions in the city.
In addition, other strong industries such as pharmaceuticals, aerospace, automotive, biomedical, financial services, and information & communications technologies play an important role in boosting the city’s economy. Large international corporations, including Siemens, Microsoft, PepsiCo, General Electric, and Wal Mart, are among several Fortune 500 companies that have their Canadian headquarters in Mississauga. The presence of these corporate giants results in significant demand for multi-lingual services.
The city is a dynamic, diverse and progressive municipality, renowned for its 86-year-old mayor, Hazel McCallion, Mississauga’s mayor for almost 30 years and one of Canada’s best known and longest serving mayors. She is affectionately called “Hurricane Hazel” by supporters as well as the media for her vibrant outspoken style of no-nonsense politics.
In 2007, Foreign Direct Investment magazine, a Financial Times Business publication, ranked the City of Mississauga the second place for “Best Economic Potential in North America” in the “North American Cities of the Future 2007/2008″ competition from the top 10 cities of all sizes, with the best strategies and resources for economic development. Mississauga is also home to the University of Toronto at Mississauga (UTM/Erindale College), one of three intercity campuses of the University of Toronto, with an enrollment of approximately 10,000 students.
Like Toronto, Mississauga is a multicultural city with a fast growing population that has roughly doubled in past twenty years. Due to a large immigrant population, more than 50% of the city’s population has a foreign native language. Mississauga features some of the largest clusters of ethnic groups in Ontario and Canada, with the largest groups being represented by people of South Asian, Indo-Caribbean, and Black Canadian/Afro-Caribbean origin. The foreign languages most common in Mississauga are Polish, Punjabi, Portuguese, Italian, and Tagalog. Accordingly a growing focus on ethnic marketing has increased the demand for high quality linguistic services.
