Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
Personally I find the whole "Moncton as hub city" a more problematic truism considering that despite its geographic location, Halifax genuinely acts as far more of a hub due to population distribution with things like Healthcare, education, air travel, etc. Other than making certain regional trips more convenient for Moncton locals, are there actually many industries in which Moncton's location has given it a dominant position?
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Regarding air travel - Halifax's dominance has a lot to do with Air Canada's "hub and spoke" system. There is no question that the size of the city and it's status as a provincial capital helps as well. Moncton only has about 15-20% of the PAX as Halifax does, and it serves more as a regional airport for the central Maritimes.
As for healthcare - Moncton is darn near self sufficient with two tertiary teaching hospitals. The only areas really lacking are pediatric care (the IWK in Halifax rightfully serves as the Maritime pediatric referral hospital) and cardiac surgery. Our cardiac patients mostly go to Saint John.
Education - Southeast NB is fairly well served with three full universities (MTA, UdeM and Crandall) and a satellite health sciences campus (UNB-Moncton). There are two community colleges in Moncton. Overall, there are 9-10,000 post secondary students in SE NB. Post graduate programs on the Anglophone side are lacking, but otherwise we're doing well.
As for industries where Moncton's geographic location makes a difference, I think you would be looking mostly as logistical stuff. Moncton is still the Atlantic Canadian HQ for CNR. The Moncton International Airport is almost as busy in freight and cargo as Halifax Stanfield (within a few percentage points). There is a lot of regional warehousing and distribution in Moncton (Kent, Shoppers, Loblaws, several pharmaceutical warehouses etc). Large trucking firms are headquartered here (Midland, Armour, Day & Ross etc). Fed Ex, UPS and Purolator all have large terminals here.
There is a lot of light manufacturing in Moncton, but that is not location specific. Customer contact centres are big here, but that has more to do with the bilingual character of the community rather than location. Financial services and insurance are big in Moncton too, but again this is not location specific. This is mostly good fortune.