“Today, the Great Lakes region continues to be vitally important to our shared well-being. This is true both economically and environmentally, because in a world where fresh water is an increasingly precious resource, there really is no separating the environment from the economy. It’s not a question of “either/or” but rather “both/and.”
The Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada (2010-2017), at CGLR’s first annual conference
The Great Lakes region, with a GDP of roughly US$6.0 trillion, represents the third largest economy in the world – if it were a country. It serves, as a result, as North America’s industrial engine and the driver of the economic partnership between the United States and Canada.
The region is also the guardian of the five Great Lakes, the largest surface freshwater system on the plan, that provide drinking water to close to 40 million Americans and Canadians. Other vital ecosystems in the region support thousands of species, some globally rare.
Before these lands were settled, for millennia the Great Lakes region has been the traditional territory for Indigenous peoples. Today, over 100 million people living in 15,000+ cities and towns call the Great Lakes region home.
Since its founding in 2013 in Cleveland, CGLR has been a catalyst for deepening the United States – Canada relationship in the Great Lakes region and basin, with a focus on creating stronger and more dynamic collaborations to harness the Great Lakes region’s economic strengths and assets, improve the well-being and prosperity of the region’s people, and protect the environment and the Great Lakes for future generations.
Through a new strategic plan approved in 2023, CGLR is striving to create the first sustainable region in the world by becoming a market leader for accelerating the regional transition to a sustainable future. CGLR will achieve this by uniquely bringing diverse perspectives and interests together to explore and solve the most serious socioeconomic and environmental challenge facing the Great Lakes region.
The report, released in 2008, offers a new analysis of the regional economic assets and opportunities that, if fully leveraged, can help drive U.S. and Canadian economic prosperity. Finally, it offers a short set of ambitious, necessary, and doable recommendations for how U.S. and Canadian leadership can help strengthen the bi-national economic relationship in the Great Lakes region, and, in the process, increase the competitiveness of both nations.
Following the Brookings Institute’s extensive work on the future of the Great Lakes region and economy, in 2011, over 250 leaders – government, business, labor, non-profit, and academic – came together in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario for the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Region Summit that was jointly convened by Brookings and the then Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto.
Participants agreed that more mature collaboration across the Canada-US border was essential to effectively tackle the region’s challenges and to capitalize on its significant opportunities. In particular, they agreed that gaps in regional leadership, knowledge sharing, and advocacy needed to be filled, but that no one organization existed to bring these interrelated binational interests together and speak to the region’s priorities.
Many policy areas were identified where stronger collaboration and voice were needed when it comes to building the region’s future, and three strategic imperatives emerged at the Summit:
- Building the Next Economy, which requires a realistic understanding of the region’s existing assets and the region’s comparative advantages in the global economy.
- Preserving a healthy ecosystem, which requires acknowledging that economic growth and sustainability are mutually inclusive, and must be pursued together.
- Deepening cross-border and cross-sector collaboration and partnership in order to address gaps in regional leadership, knowledge sharing, and advocacy.
To implement the Vital Commons Agenda, a new binational organization, the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR), was launched in 2013 in Cleveland, Ohio, with the support of then United States Ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, and Canada’s Ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer.
Working with many of the region’s organizations and diverse interests, CGLR began its mission to inform state, provincial and federal decision-makers in both countries about the region’s long-term economic, social, and environmental goals. It also began to connect private, public, and nonprofit actors across the region together as one, cultivating a stronger regional voice to promote shared interests and solutions to the region’s common challenges.
Recognizing the diversity of economic, social, and environmental issues facing the Great Lakes region and the vital importance of the region to the future of the relationship between the United States and Canada, a 501c6 trade association (CGLR USA) and a 501c3 public charity (CGLR Foundation) were formed in the U.S. to more effectively convene stakeholders and support CGLR’s activities and growth.
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