Edmonton Economic Development Corporation

ConsiderCanada.com and CanadaEnTete.com, two new Web sites that provide comprehensive information for global companies considering expansion into North America.

According to the World Economic Forum, Canada has benefited from the soundest banking system in the world for the last three years running. For the eighth consecutive time, KPMG's Competitive Alternatives study finds Canada leading the G7 with the lowest business costs. The C.D. Howe Institute, which studies social and economic policy, also stated that Canada's international reputation as a destination for capital and investment is better than it has been for a generation

Economic development professionals from Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Québec City, Winnipeg, the Waterloo Region, and Saskatoon work together every day to guide international companies to the Canadian city or cities that offer the most strategic fit," says Michael Darch, Executive Director of OCRI's Ottawa Global Marketing team. "ConsiderCanada.com and CanadaEnTete.com are the latest tools at our disposal to bring new opportunities home.

The biggest impact a planning school would have is bringing a good brain trust of urban designers to Edmonton, and getting people to talk about planning in a more serious manner,

Currently, budding urban planners must leave Edmonton in order to continue their education. That’s what happened to urban planner and transit advocate Brian Gould. He left over two years ago to get his masters in urban planning at the University of California, Berkeley, and now lives in Vancouver. The 24-year-old helped establish the Transit Riders Union of Edmonton (TRUE), and wrote on transit issues for a local daily.

“Edmontonians being trained in the city, that’s a benefit right there,” he says, “but there’s also a steady stream of free work coming out of studio projects.”

The general funding limits under this program are: Project-Based Grants - maximum $75,000. Community Operating Grants - maximum $75,000.

it's the sector in which the government has most directly intervened -- health care -- that has maintained the most robust job growth over the past two years, adding 20,000 new jobs in November alone.

it is harder to avoid the notion that a lot of those old jobs simply weren't adding much to the economy

The story runs as follows. Before the financial crash, there were lots of not-so-useful workers holding not-so-useful jobs. Employers didn't so much bother to figure out who they were. Demand was high and revenue was booming, so rooting out the less productive workers would have involved a lot of time and trouble -- plus it would have involved some morale costs with the more productive workers, who don't like being measured and spied on. So firms simply let the problem lie.

But there's good reason to believe that the labor market won't be keeping pace. Rather than an aberration, high unemployment may be an enduring feature of the United States' economy.

Even if the December rate of job creation continues, it will be 2014 before unemployment is down to 5 percent.

NorQuest College has decided to develop more extension courses, outside the provincially funded system, as a way to cope with uncertain provincial budgets.

Health and business will be the primary areas of growth,

The main thing we talked about yesterday at the ONEdmonton forum was economic development. In addition to breakouts and other discussion, we had two informative presentations that I hope to blog about over the next while. In her presentation on Diversifying Edmonton’s Economy, Tammy Fallowfield, EEDC’s Executive Director of Economic Development, touched on shifting the “Alberta Advantage”. Here’s what her slide said: Remain relatively low tax Not a low cost environment Not a surplus of labour Not a currency ‘bargain’

How about our labour force? All across Canada the population is aging, and that (along with our very low fertility rate) is going to lead to labour shortages. Here’s a graph from Alberta’s Occupational Demand & Supply Outlook, 2009-2019 (PDF), that shows this trend for our province:

There are many consequences as a result of this trend, not the least of which is Alberta’s challenge to attract and retain labour. Our taxes will likely also be impacted – an older population means higher costs for health care, and a slow growing labour force means a slow growing tax base.

The report highlights 7 challenges facing city planners: energy and climate change, river water supply, food security, biodiversity, air quality, one planet living, and waste management.

Edmonton is currently losing protected spaces to generating new ones at a rate of 5:2, and it recommends that we implement city-wide biodiversity planning which uses techniques such as biodiversity offset (where new protected spaces are generated for previous spaces claimed)

Noting that the White Paper report has a 30-year timeline, its largest weakness is that it provides no financial analysis citing that all of these projects would be economically beneficial if studied in sufficiently long timeframes. While the irreplaceable value of our natural surroundings is widely appreciated, a 5-year or 10-year estimate of how this plan will affect the city’s bottom line would be a necessity before the valuable suggestions the White Paper has made are incorporated into city planning policies

notable increase in housing difficulties experienced by newcomers (nation-wide and locally) increasing reliance on immigration for Calgary’s economic growth intensifying disparities faced by immigrants in finding and maintaining appropriate employment impacts of income and employment disparities on housing outcomes

average percentage of immediate family after-tax income spent on housing was 50 per cent 23 percent of responders reported worrying about their housing situation all the time 30 per cent reported that their housing situation was worse in Canada than in their home country only 10 and 7 per cent reported that being close to their cultural/national community and faith community respectively was something they liked about where they live the most commonly reported resource for help with finding housing was friends (60 per cent), compared with 13.5 per cent for family and 12.8 per cent for immigrant services

increase the number of affordable housing options that are appropriate for newcomers in terms of size, location, and proximity to amenities ensure settlement funding recognizes housing as critical to settlement and provides adequate resources enhance collaboration and communication between the homeless and settlement sectors to increase joint program design, planning, and service delivery for newcomers

Alberta isn't far away from a labour shortage worse than the one it suffered during the last boom, says the head of a provincial business group.

The problem with the unemployment rates that are published on StatsCan or the Government of Alberta is they're taken in such large census districts, they can't tell where there (are), in fact, currently labour shortages," Kobly said.

Most of the job gains occurred in the professional, scientific and technical services category, which added 13,300 jobs; and in the forestry, fishing, mining, oil and gas category, which added 6,100.