Economic Developers Alberta (EDA) is suggesting that the municipality needs to focus on supporting and expanding existing businesses as they continue to recover.
The report, ‘Embracing the New Economic Realities: After the wildfire‘ looks at the business sector of the region and makes suggestions to the municipality to better position themselves for the future.
“You [the municipality] would be best serving the business community if you focused on them first,” said Leann Hackman-Carty, CEO of EDA.
“Business retention and expansion is absolutely critical, you must maintain what you have or you will be in trouble later. We really put a lot of recommendations around what can you do now, to make sure you prop them up to succeed because they are hurting.”
A team of 10 individuals conducted over 207 interviews that included meeting with 125 businesses one-on-one, 31 community organizations, 27 individuals in civic leadership roles and 24 rural stakeholders.
Businesses that the team engaged with identified challenges to the recovery process that included insufficient two-way engagement, limited insurance capacity, lack of affordable commercial or industrial space, loss of entry level staff and lack of procurement opportunities for regional businesses.
In the report there are over 50 recommendations that respond directly to issues the community stakeholders expressed.
EDA said these suggestions could be implemented throughout immediate, short and longer term recovery.
Kelly Hansen, Economic Development Manager for the Recovery Task Force said they already have programs in place or were in the process of putting some programs out when the report was being written.
“There is certainly ways to modify what we are doing or strengthen what we are doing, we don’t look at this and go these are 50 brand new ideas because some of them we’re working toward already. It is good information to have and helps us look at things from a different stand point,” said Hansen.
Andrea Haley, Acting Manager for Wood Buffalo Economic Development said the other long term recommendations will need a deeper conversation between the municipality and stakeholders.
Hackman-Carty said what economic development could be doing is really working with businesses and understanding where the challenges still are.
“Work toward making the municipality more business friendly. Here is a chance to rebuild better. Look at the processes, look at the information you need, to make better decisions,” said Hackman-Carty.
She noted that one of the good things the municipality did was setting up the emergency business hotline. It allowed businesses to give their own input on what supports they were looking for.
The real economic impact of the wildfire may not be known for some time, right now in the region there is a false economy with the construction boom related to the rebuild.
“At one point it is going to change and you’re going to realize what the new normal is,” said Hackman-Carty.
The Business Resource Centre is open from 8:30-4:30 p.m. on the second floor of Timberlea Landing
