The scene: a conference centre near Toronto airport, formerly a Sears warehouse. The date: early November. The headlines: “1,100 local jobs lost at Chrysler.” The circumstances couldn’t have been more propitious for Workwest’s first Toronto-based career fair, a two-day event that saw two dozen Alberta employers go trolling for new staff from Canada’s largest city.
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Canada is changing fast. Where Toronto and Montreal were once considered the country’s only metropolises, now Vancouver is renowned as a “world-class city,” and Calgary and Edmonton aren’t far behind.
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Easterners could make fun of Albertaâs daffy ideas and biases too, if word got out (more…)
For years, the spectre of shortage loomed. Pundits warned that Alberta could not exploit this vital resource forever. But now it’s done, and even Peter Lougheed has said that the provincial government wasn’t ready.
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Urban business “dragons” still can’t take agriculture seriously. Their loss (more…)
In the war for talent, winning hearts may be harder than minds
When a team from Edmonton Economic Development put on a promotional event in Toronto last fall, one official admitted they came to Ontario because Alberta needs all the business talent and investment it can get – and it’s already hired every Newfoundlander who’ll come. (more…)
On April 4, the same day a chagrined Ralph Klein agreed to step down early, Jim Dinning cancelled a speaking engagement in Toronto. The former Alberta treasurer had agreed to join a panel to discuss: “The West Is In: Now What?” But as the front-runner to succeed Klein, Dinning realized that “Now what?” had turned from a rhetorical question into a pressing personal issue. (more…)
A few words to the wise on investing in real estate
Two booms ago, I was a fresh-faced staff writer for Alberta Report magazine. Since I knew very little about business, I was assigned a cover story on Calgary’s housing boom.
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How easterners are coming to grips with Alberta’s ascendancy
By Rick Spence
When I started writing this column, I told a number of Torontonians I was writing about what eastern Canadians think of Alberta and Albertans. More than a few replied, “Tell them we never think of them.” (more…)
Hubris alone won’t sell Alberta
By Rick Spence
At a recent lunch in suburban Etobicoke, officials from Edmonton Economic Development Corp. invited Toronto-area business people to come learn more about the City of Champions (the old slogan still holding up, thanks to the 2005 Grey Cup) and its shiny economic prospects. Centre of the discussion, of course, was the oilsands. But people at my table mostly wondered why our hosts were serving chicken. If they are going to rub Torontonians’ noses in Alberta’s growing wealth, the least they could do was offer a good steak.
By the end, however, people meant something else when they asked, “Where’s the beef?” Sure, our hosts were generous in spooning out the stats. In his presentation, EEDC president Allan Scott pointed out that Edmonton, with a workforce of 583,000, has created 113,500 jobs in the past 10 years. To prove it’s no hick town, he noted that Edmonton has 157,000 post-secondary students. He even elicited ooohs and ahhhs when he showed a slide demonstrating that Edmonton has the most diversified economy in Canada.
The main message was one of unstoppable growth. Scott said 50 cents of every dollar spent on the oilsands make their way to Edmonton. Lori Schmidt, EECD’s director of industry and cluster development, pointed out that Edmonton was the only one of Canada’s seven largest cities to see employment growth in manufacturing in recent years. And she foresaw dramatic new opportunities in manufacturing thanks to new projects beyond the oilsands, such as CN Rail’s planned expansion and more diamond production in the Northwest Territories. “We’ve been through these booms before,” she admitted, “so Alberta manufacturers are not just depending on northern oil projects.”
Still, not everyone was impressed. Peter, a man who deigned not to give his last name, has a manufactured-homes business. He’s heard a lot about the housing shortage in Fort McMurray, and wanted info on how to sell into that market. He figures his top-of-the-line $45,000 models might be a perfect way to bring quality accommodation to the market fast. He was disappointed when I mentioned that Highway 63 is one lane in each direction. After hearing so much about Alberta’s rapid growth and economic might, he was astounded to learn that twinning the highway will take five years.
Another disappointed diner was Monica Ospina, a trade official with the Council of Great Lakes governors (representing the rustbelt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Indiana). “I expected to hear more about other sectors than the oil industry,” she says. She was especially interested in learning how advanced technology companies in her states could connect with Alberta tech firms – but other than brief nods to a thriving biotech sector (“fourth largest bio cluster in Canada”) and the new institute for nanotechnology, the presenters gave the industries of tomorrow short shrift.
When Ospina spoke to them afterwards, they pointed her to Alberta First.com, a muchballyhooed online joint venture of the province, the feds and 190 Alberta municipalities. Interviewed a week later, Ospina wasn’t impressed by the website; her search for biotech companies produced nine listings. Two of them turned out to be equipment manufacturers, and she was unable to link through to learn about the others. Another questioner at the luncheon asked about the cost of renting manufacturing or warehouse space. She was a little chilled to hear that costs are about $9 to $15 a square foot – and that with a 3% vacancy rate, rents are creeping up into the $20 range.
And Ritvik Ray, whose company makes and sells food additives, was disappointed not to get more specific information about how to find new Alberta suppliers of raw materials. “It’s unbelievable what’s going on in Edmonton,” he says, “but all that information is available in the Globe and Mail every morning. I’m not sure I got much out of the session.”
Clearly, there’s no free lunch. But a more important moral for Edmonton might be this: economic wealth is a gift. But economic development is an art.
Rick Spence is a Toronto-based writer and content-marketing consultant. You can read his entrepreneurship blog at http://canentrepreneur.blogspot.co
