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Calgary & Alberta Economy

Despite no serious concerns being voiced, inflation is here. The three largest purchases that a family will make are up substantially in the last year

1. House Prices - through the roof - and not even counted in the CPI index
2. Automobiles - no sales, no negotiating - pretty much pay sticker price
3. Food

I could probably add in many products to do with home renovations (i.e wood) and also gasoline (although that price does fluctuate up and down every year)
At some point, the only answer to rising inflation is to increase interest rates. That will stall economic growth in a big way. I wonder how the BofC will react.
 
You don't raise interest rates due to supply chain problems absorbing all the slack that exists and then some for auto manufacturers. If housing was going to be the trigger for interest rate hikes, it would have happened long ago. And food inflation comes and goes.

Certain columnists and financial analysts have made a great living being scared about inflation for decades. Have they made the right call in a generation?
 
Chowda7 said:
Calgary killing it again on the venture capital front. $206 million raised by firms in Q1 2021 alone. That's almost 60% of the entire 2020 total!! Great momentum, hope we can keep it going.

Link: https://www.cvca.ca/research-insight/market-reports/q1-2021-vc-pe-canadian-market-overview/

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I'm curious as to what some of you guys make of this? @darwink @JonnyCanuck @UrbanWarrior ? What do you think Calgary has that allows us to compete for Venture Capital with cities much larger than us, ie. Vancouver, Montreal, as well as..What does Calgary offer to allow us to blow the other cities, roughly our size, out of the water? Also what do you guys and anyone else for that matter, think this means for Calgary's future?
 
Calgary is a well known transportation and business hub with a lot of money behind us. We're also far and away the regional primate metropolis of the Prairies, especially impressive since we're not a capital and have a city nearly identical in population to us only 3 hours away, however, the GDP, tourism, and global rankings speak for themselves on that matter. The Prairies are an enormous region with some of the largest mineral wealth on the planet. On top of that, we are also the youngest city in Canada with the second most educated population (behind Ottawa I believe), with a highly skilled work force and pool of talent that is currently twitling its thumbs waiting for a big opportunity since the oil crash. this is why we have seen so many homegrown companies achieve such success over the past couple of years. It's only now beginning to snowball into what will (hopefully) become a juggernaught of innovation on the national and global scenes. There's a lot more to say, but that's the gist.
 
UrbanWarrior said:
Calgary is a well known transportation and business hub with a lot of money behind us. We're also far and away the regional primate metropolis of the Prairies, especially impressive since we're not a capital and have a city nearly identical in population to us only 3 hours away, however, the GDP, tourism, and global rankings speak for themselves on that matter. The Prairies are an enormous region with some of the largest mineral wealth on the planet. On top of that, we are also the youngest city in Canada with the second most educated population (behind Ottawa I believe), with a highly skilled work force and pool of talent that is currently twitling its thumbs waiting for a big opportunity since the oil crash. this is why we have seen so many homegrown companies achieve such success over the past couple of years. It's only now beginning to snowball into what will (hopefully) become a juggernaught of innovation on the national and global scenes. There's a lot more to say, but that's the gist.
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Thanks for that Urban! Succinctly put. Basically nothing I didn't already know but always good to get the opinion of those more well versed on the subject. In fact I liked your response so much I read it twice.

Your comment on our GDP made me curious too so I found this:

www.statista.com

GDP of metro areas in Canada in 2016 and 2021 | Statista

This statistic shows the real gross domestic product of Canadian metropolitan areas in 2016 with a forecast for 2021.
www.statista.com www.statista.com

Pretty remarkable, in my opinion, Calgary's economic capacity and potential.
 
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Also dumb luck. We could rerun the last decade with different incentives and rules, or the same, a hundred times and not end up with the same fin tech cluster for example. Sometimes that is what it is - luck. We just gotta lean into it now. And hopefully it creates a class of homegrown early investors beyond the current rainforest/cdl known supporters.
 
darwink said:
Also dumb luck. We could rerun the last decade with different incentives and rules, or the same, a hundred times and not end up with the same fin tech cluster for example. Sometimes that is what it is - luck. We just gotta lean into it now. And hopefully it creates a class of homegrown early investors beyond the current rainforest/cdl known supporters.
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And we needed some luck. Tech has always been fickle so all we can hope for at this point is that this little tech boom we've been having can solidly into a sustainable ecosystem

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releas...t-for-calgary-s-tech-ecosystem-879302926.html 🤔
 
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Same caveats apply as to infosys - this is about them accessing our regional market and creating a regional workforce to support it (plus a nice headoffice-y presence), rather than an office which employs Calgarians to support a global product for a global company.

It is great and all, but it is more about replacing half of 100 companies IT departments with a contracting workforce, rather than pure net new jobs.
 
darwink said:
Same caveats apply as to infosys - this is about them accessing our regional market and creating a regional workforce to support it (plus a nice headoffice-y presence), rather than an office which employs Calgarians to support a global product for a global company.

It is great and all, but it is more about replacing half of 100 companies IT departments with a contracting workforce, rather than pure net new jobs.
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This one at least says they'll be using Calgary as a Canadian headquarters, but I imagine eventually they will open other offices around the country, and it'll back to a situation of cannibalization. Not only taking jobs away from IT departments, but also from other providers doing the same thing (Longview Systems, or even Infosys) Calgary has had a large amount of good paying IT jobs, that have slowly been replaced by companies going to a 3rd party IT provider, many of those jobs have been in other city or another country, so the trend isn't great for Calgary, but on the other hand the trend is the trend, and at least these companies are making Calgary a regional or national HQ.

On a side note, I work in the IT industry and have seen the changes over the years. This isn't the first time I've seen the trend for companies to switch over to 3rd party providers, it's happened a lot in the past (usually when there's a downturn, and the company needs quick on paper savings) and in every case that I've seen it happen, the company switched back to local IT department at some point....usually when times are better and the company gets busier. Suncor is a good example. They went from local IT to outsourced and back a few times, with the most recent switch back in January, back to local IT.
 
Some of the things in Calgary's favour that could and should attract more business/industries (and people) outside the oil & gas industry
1. We do have a skilled an educated workforce. Though 'm just not sure that it is the right skill and education for all the opportunities presented. I also read somewhere that some companies are having difficulty finding people with the specific skills and education they need. The city and educational institutions really need to be in sync so that post secondary students are offered, and encouraged to take, curriculums that have the best chance to land them a job upon graduation.
2. An abundance of centrally located grade A office space that should becoming less expensive as time goes on.
3. A world class transportation and logistics hub (airport, regional carriers etc)
4. Compared to other major cities in North America, a reasonably affordable housing sector and a lower tax structure (provincial income, no PST)
5. Solid (dare I say it) health care and educational system
6. As well as offering dining and entertainment options that you would expect in a big city, we have more outdoor activity options available than most urban centers.

Calgary has a lot to offer. Hopefully, post COVID, we can draw more attention to us.
 
darwink said:
Also dumb luck. We could rerun the last decade with different incentives and rules, or the same, a hundred times and not end up with the same fin tech cluster for example. Sometimes that is what it is - luck. We just gotta lean into it now. And hopefully it creates a class of homegrown early investors beyond the current rainforest/cdl known supporters.
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Luck can be overcome through numbers. Tech is high risk. The key to success is learning from past failures and trying again. Higher risk tolerance is Calgary's primary advantage over other Canadian cities.
 
DougB said:
Luck can be overcome through numbers. Tech is high risk. The key to success is learning from past failures and trying again. Higher risk tolerance is Calgary's primary advantage over other Canadian cities.
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Calgary's business community has a low risk tolerance - we shouldn't kid ourselves. This is a myth we tell about ourselves. Rainforest, CDL-R, and others have been doing a good job slowly making that risk tolerance higher, but it is a battle for sure.
 
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