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Toronto's new Agenda for Prosperity is an infuriating document, no doubt about it.

The product of the Toronto Mayor's Economic Competitiveness Advisory Committee - a high-powered group of leaders in business, academia and labour - is intended to become the basis of Toronto's new economic development plan.

Coming up with and implementing such a plan is non-trivial work; really, the realization of every other plan in this town, from transportation to parks and recreation, hinges on Toronto maintaining and building a strong economy inside its borders.

And looking at the Agenda for Prosperity ... it's hard, glancing through its 40 vague, broad-ranging and consistently un-costed recommendations, to make out a clear route to that prosperity. The plan shares the flaws of too many committee-written reports: bureaucratic language with action verbs as rare as dodos; position statements blurred by consensus to the point of incomprehensibility; a nearly consistent lack of focus.

And as to those parts that come into focus?

Red tape will be eliminated; the mayor will get a long-overdue economic development analyst; the city will improve its marketing message, and reach out to the world in doing so; the city must make itself more attractive to business in fact as well as message, improving public transit infrastructure and making sure basic services are well funded. The plan suggests micro-loans for low-income entrepreneurs and mentoring programs in the trades for disadvantaged youth.

Finding any one thing among all these that will turn Toronto into an economic powerhouse is just about impossible; and listening to the report's authors, that seems to be the point.

And as frustrating as it may be to hear for those of us who are used to seeing straightforward marketing plans, big events and tax incentives as the sole lever used by governments to stimulate economic growth, that might just be a good thing.

Because frankly, Toronto doesn't have a very good record with its traditional approaches to economic development.

During the first years of amalgamation, Mayor Mel Lastman tried the big, flashy approach to economic development - whether it be bidding for the Olympics or the heroically cheesy moose campaign that the mayor championed. The Olympics would certainly have given the city a boost if the bid had succeeded - but it didn't. And the spectacle of littering public spaces with giant fiberglass moose sculptures was certainly attention-getting - but long-term benefits? Dubious at best.

The Agenda for Prosperity actually marks a healthy realization on the part of city leadership: it's not just one thing that attracts intelligent and successful investment to a region. It's everything.

Toronto has to be well-financed so it can deliver reliable services. Transportation around the city has to be smooth, efficient and affordable. The city does have to get a positive message about itself out to the world, but it has to be a message based on the city's real strengths, and there have to be real incentives to businesses, too.

And a city can't afford to maintain an under-employed, impoverished under-class of people who consistently miss out on any economic growth that does occur in the city.

So that infuriatingly broad and vague Agenda for Prosperity that the mayor's task force dropped in our laps actually does represent a huge step forward for the economic development in this town. Or to put it another way - it represents a huge number of small steps forward. In lockstep.