Québec' coastal maritime cluster: Its impact on regional economic development, 2001-2011

The notion of clusters has increasingly been integrated into regional economic development policies. This paper examines the extent to which maritime cluster policy strategies in Québec's coastal region are associated with employment growth in the region, and more specifically, science-based, skill-intensive employment. Whilst early evaluations conducted about a decade ago suggested that cluster policies implemented from the mid-1990s onwards had little effect, the question addressed in this paper concerns their effect over the long term. Based on descriptive statistics and trend analysis, the results reveal that the sectors targeted by the cluster policies have tended to grow more slowly within the cluster, and that jobs in the cluster are decreasingly science-intensive. At best, cluster policies have had a weak and diffused effect. This is in keeping with other recent work on clusters, and calls into question policy attempts to generate cluster dynamics in regions where these do not emerge spontaneously.