With such transportation capabilities, it's no surprise that Winnipeg is the heart of Manitoba's business activities. The city ranks just behind Toronto as one of the country's largest financial services center and is a growing biotechnology presence.
      Animal health research is particularly important to the Canadian agricultural industry: Canada's success in the export market depends on its ability to remain free of serious animal diseases found in other countries. As usual, Winnipeg delivers: Its new Canadian Science Center for Human and Animal Health is the first facility in the world designed to accommodate both human and animal health research laboratories.
      When New York-based financial firm Moody's Investment Services released its analysis of 25 Canadian cities and 10 provinces last year, it ranked the city of Winnipeg as the most diverse economic center in the country. Winnipeg has to be "all things to all people ... and it is serving more square miles than most cities," Sally Gordon, the New York-based senior analyst who wrote the report, told the National Post newspaper when the analysis was released in November 2000.
      "She's right. It really is all here," says Klaus Thiessen, president and CEO of Economic Development Winnipeg. "Our city has developed the kind of diverse economy that provides the investor with opportunities. The city's large enough to have everything that is required, and small enough that it's all accessible -- and that includes access to networks in the community."
      The Moody's study is used as a tool to help holders of commercial, mortgage-backed bonds determine whether their property portfolios are sufficiently diversified. For instance, if they have a lot of properties in cities whose economies are heavily reliant upon the same industries, they may want to alter the mix in order to spread out the risk. In other parts of the country, cities are more likely to become a center for certain industries, Gordon notes, but concentration in one industry may not always be a good thing: "You might like telecommunications, but years down the road, what if there is a downturn in that sector?" This city's economic diversity is like a built-in buffer in times of adversity, making it "less likely to suffer from a downturn in a specific sector," she adds.
      Diversity means manufacturers can source many of their inputs from other firms and draw on a large pool of skilled labor. "We do have one of the best work forces on the continent in terms of turnover and stability," says Thiessen. "And we're multilingual; one call center location has services in 53 different languages."