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Originally Posted by Rutuu
Read the article and appreciate you posting it, but its hard to take any politician that signed that arena deal seriously. Also they rank their education facilities as their largest growth sector? Has he seen a report that deals with Canadian GDP growth and its correlation with the oil sands?
I'm still in disbelief how Edmonton can piss away so many guaranteed city building advantages. The U of A predates U of C by decades, they had the first major oil discovery at Leduc #1, they have the capital for Alberta and all the ancillary services, they have the refineries, they retained their military base when Calgary's was shut down, etc, etc...hard to believe given that kind of head start that Calgary was able to out pace them. I see it as a testament of the quality of politicians and what the citizens demand from them.
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It's the nature of the employment alternatives that Edmonton has vs. Calgary that are responsible for the difference. Calgary outpaced Edmonton in the last oil bust in the period of 1986-2000 and has since not looked back. Due to Calgary's larger head office presence it tended to have a higher educated workforce of professionals. These types of people are better able to adpat to differing economic realities, and actually played a large role in the growth of small businesses in the city during that time period. If you look back in time Calgary's economy was still the fastest growing in Canada in the late 90s despite oil prices that were around $10-20 per barrel.
Edmonton however was in a period of decline due to the double whammy of Klein's civil service cutbacks and languishing oil and gas prices. Edmonton's economy on the margin rides the boom and bust of the oil economy more heavily because field workers are only suited to work, when there actually is demand for their work and the province only hires civil servants when it has money, which also correlates to the performance of Oil and gas prices.
Look at the population histories of the two cities, Calgary continued to grow during the last bust, Edmonton didn't.