Without a doubt, these are some tough times for many Albertans. The slump in the oil and gas sector has many people unemployed or underemployed, and things are a bit grim for many, even more so since it's Christmas.
BlueCircle's Gerry, Kelly and myself were invited to a town hall meeting with our mayor, Naheed Nenshi, to discuss the economic state of our city and what plans the City has for helping boost our economy.
Needless to say, we liked to hear that the City of Calgary along with Calgary Economic Development, have some plans in place to not only keep our economy headed in the right direction but to assist those businesses that may be having a difficult time while making the adjustments needed to deal with the associated challenges we are facing.
Although he jokingly referred to the town hall meeting as "the best catered funeral ever", Mayor Nenshi felt there were many positives with our economy, based on long term investments of a diverse nature. Twenty years ago, 50% of our city's GDP was made up fromt eh oil and gas industry, whereas today it only accounts for approximately 30%. Add to that the addition of 5000 new jobs in 2015, despite the massive layoffs in the oil and gas sector, and you can see why Nenshi feels we are quite resilient. He pointed out the cranes that can still be seen all over Calgary’s downtown and many developers are betting hundreds of millions of dollars on the city’s ability to bounce back.
“If people want to live here, economic activity follows, and making sure this place is attractive – in both senses of the words – is the core of this economic strategy.”
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| Kelly is ready to hear some good news |
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| Yes, lots of media |
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| The first venue sold out so they moved to a bigger room, which also sold out! |
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| Mayor Nenshi is a great speaker |
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