Albertans have a reputation for risk-taking, but is it justified?
It’s almost become gospel that Alberta is Canada’s entrepreneurial heartland. Where Ontario seems to be all about real estate and tax lawyers and Quebec Inc., a cabal of crony capital, where Atlantic Canada seems happy to be a bedroom community for Fort McMurray and B.C.’s out smoking behind the barn, Alberta is still seen as can-do country, the last best home of rolled-up sleeves and rugged individualism.
But is this stereotype really true?
By one count, Alberta is certainly leading the pack. Guess which province produced the winner of the National Entrepreneur of the Year title four times in the past six years? (Hint: the four winners were CCS Income Trust, The Brick, Veritas DGC Inc. and a little airline called WestJet.) In the last 12 years, Quebec has won the trophy once, Ontario six times, and Alberta five.
But let’s see what Statistics Canada says. In 2003, Alberta was home to 294,202 businesses. That’s 93.3 businesses for every thousand of population – compared to 77 in B.C., 67 in Quebec, and 65 in Ontario. That’s pretty conclusive, right? Trouble is, this statistic favours regions with higher rural populations, so Saskatchewan wins this tractor pull, with 96 businesses per 1,000 people.
If entrepreneurship is part of Alberta’s character, you would expect it to apply to men and women. Surely, in a culture driven by performance, women should be active participants in business. And indeed, the most recent data shows women comprising 34.4% of Alberta’s self-employed population. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the second highest percentage among the provinces (B.C., at 34.5%, won by a hair). Plus, the annual growth rate of self-employed women was 5.4%, a full percentage point higher than the average rate in central and eastern Canada.
And then there’s my favourite argument, anecdotal evidence. Look how Alberta’s culture is rooted in entrepreneurial activity. It was the first province in which a public broadcaster (Access Network) was privatized. Alberta Venture itself is a thriving entrepreneurial initiative that was rescued from the privatization ash-heap. And in Calgary, the Glenbow Museum proudly bills itself as “one of Canada’s most entrepreneurial Top 10 museums.”
But here’s the rub. When a province is as rich and busy as Alberta, what does that do to your entrepreneurial instincts? What incentive is there to sweat and struggle and build? “It’s easy to think you’re smart when you’re rolling in dough, especially the easy kind,” says Stephen Bosch, CEO of Calgary-based Vodacomm Voice & Data Corp. In an e-mail in response to a previous column in this space, he observed that “what innovation exists in Alberta is there in spite of the wealth, and not because of it. In the 1980s, when the provincial economy was in the toilet, nobody was interested in new ventures.”
But Jay Krysler, a former senior advisor on entrepreneurship to the Alberta government who teaches at Edmonton’s Grant MacEwan College, has a more hopeful take. He sees lots of students who are dazzled by the good jobs and high pay in the oilfields. But he says that having such a lifeline actually encourages young people to start their own businesses. “Because the economy has been so strong for a number of years, people’s view of risk has really turned around,” says Krysler. “People have a lot of dreams out there and they want to pursue them. Now they’re saying to themselves, “I could try this (business startup), and if it doesn’t work out, I can always go get another job’.”
They say it’s better to be rich than smart. With luck, however, Alberta’s entrepreneurial instincts will outweigh the rest of its good fortune.
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