The City of Prince George has set up a new P.G. Economic Development Committee. This committee will work with the city to find ways to attract development to Prince George.
We will of course be looking forward to some results from both this committee and the new setup we now have with economic development in the city since Initiatives Prince George has been dismantled.
The time has come for us to get very serious about how we spend our money, and what we get in return for the expenditure. As an example, IPG cost us in excess of $30 million over the past 30 years, and you would be hard pressed to see any results for these huge expenditures. We now have an in-house economic development department, and while it should not cost us anywhere near what we paid for IPG, we still run the risk of actually doing nothing but paying high salaries with no real benefits for expenditures.
One of the problems with committees and in-house municipal economic development departments is that those involved have very little, if any, "skin in the game."
Definition of skin in the game is "to have a personal stake or investment in something."
The city has an investment in the sense that if we get developers, then the city gets additional development money through development costs, taxes, etc. However, the only "stake" they have is spending tax dollars and if the development does not materialize or fails, they go on to something else and there is no responsibility for failure.
Another example of "skin in the game" would be the private developers at the Port of Stewart B.C. who recently invested $70 million of their own money to develop a break bulk facility in Stewart, to try and capture break bulk traffic from other countries, unload it in Stewart, and ship it to other parts of the country. This type of investment takes on a certain amount of risk, and thus you can say without a doubt that the two individuals involved have "skin in the game" and as a result will work very hard to ensure the success of this venture.
Prince George seems to think that all we need to do is send out information sheets and sooner or later some company will come to town and set up a plant, hire people to work, and manufacture widgets. That may have worked many years ago, however the likelihood of that happening now is remote.
What we need in Prince George is a paradigm shift.
A paradigm shift is a time when the usual and acceptable way of doing or thinking about something changes completely.
We need to stop waiting for multi-national companies to create jobs and wealth for Canada, the provinces and regions. It's time we took the initiative and started to create industry and jobs ourselves.
This new development committee and the City of Prince George are in a good position to assist new development, and so is Northern Development Initiative Trust, and the Prince George Airport.
However, these entities cannot do anything without investment dollars.
We need local business, banks, railways, trucking companies, and other businesses to be at the table, to be able to invest, and take some risk. What we need is more collaboration with other cities and towns in the area, which are experiencing the same problems that we are.
What we need is an inventory of what our positive points are, and what our negatives are. What we need is for the provincial and federal governments to focus on rural development in a meaningful way, and ensure that money is available for infrastructure. The days of making monetary contributions with no end-game in mind other than getting reelected has to change.
We need to do more than try to attract people to the area, we need to try and stop them from leaving. This means better roads, snow clearing, infrastructure and points of interest for tourists. We need to support outlying areas as much or more than they support us. Working together and seeing the big picture is where we need to go. Most of all we need good, business ideas.
So what's the point? It's that north central B.C. has hit a wall, and there is no way forward unless we change the way we do things. Now more than ever we need to invest in our future. To not do so means that eventually most of us will migrate out of this area.
