How to diversify Alberta and save Bombardier (crazy thought)

[FlameOn]

We have so many engineers dedicated to chemicals and energy. Why not do the renewable / energy storage research. It'd require a bit of a stretch, but not as much as retooling the provincial economy towards financials.

Tech, energy and defense should be our plays here given the abundance of engineering talent. Sadly I feel like this should have been something that was done during the Ralph buck days.

[HOWITZER]

Originally Posted by Bandwagon In Flames

There's been some talk of turning Calgary into the tech capital of Canada. I think that would be more realistic and beneficial to the city.

Vancouver is currently considered the tech capital with their gaming industry. But Calgary has the infrastructure and will soon have affordable cost of living (already much more affordable than Vancouver).

LOL, a lot of cities in Canada claim the role of "tech capital".

Toronto calls itself the tech capital because of a whole ton of start-ups
Kitchener-Waterloo does the same because of the university and start-ups coming out of there and the decline at RIM
Ottawa calls itself the tech capital because of the Kanata tech area (and the old Nortel campus). There are a bunch of legacy telco companies based out of this area.
Vancouver is known (as stated for gaming and more and more for generic software).

I don't think Calgary can necessarily compete with those established areas, especially with no existing support infrastructure and a university not known for software/tech development (like UofT and Waterloo).

I've been advocating that Calgary/Alberta needs to pivot from Oil & Gas to alternative energy development, but what that looks like is the billion dollar question.

[calgarygeologist]

I thought Calgary and Edmonton have exceptional medical research facilities and professionals. I think we've come up with many medical revolutions and advancements over the past two decades. Maybe Alberta can try to leverage that and we can become the medical and health capital. We can try to attract some of the big pharma and big medical research companies.

[Fuzz]

We've got petroleum, chemical engineers, really smart people and cheap energy. Material sciences would be a good area to leverage these specialties.

[afc wimbledon]

There's never any point in trying to create an industry, what governments need to do is look at what's developing organically and nurture that.

I would guess there's a fair amount of oil and gas tech firms, pipe builders, valve casting, that kind of thing that serviced the domestic industry who's product is now 25 percent cheaper in the U.S., in fact an oil and gas manufacturing sector would be pretty good 'short' against low oil prices as its products would then become hugely cheaper as the dollar drops.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Bandwagon In Flames

There's been some talk of turning Calgary into the tech capital of Canada. I think that would be more realistic and beneficial to the city.

Vancouver is currently considered the tech capital with their gaming industry. But Calgary has the infrastructure and will soon have affordable cost of living (already much more affordable than Vancouver).

I think the infrastructure is in place to turn Calgary into a Finance town. Very dense core, lots of office space, young well educated population, allot of people already work early/late/long hours. Looking at that this town really mirrors allot of the finance capitals of the world.

Techs a different one, not sure if it's that easy to attract that industry. San Fran grew organically from a few early successes, and Vancouver partly took advantage of being the closest place in North America to the gaming industry leaders in Asia. Both the city also have the advantage of being among the most attractive climates in the world, and the tech industry doesn't exactly have to deal with geography when considering locations, so they have the luxury of selecting places that are nice to live to set up shop, Calgary probably does OK on that front but not great.

edit: Yes gp Matt it is a crazy idea, as a land locked region Alberta will never be a leader in manufacturing exports, too expensive to get materials, too expensive to ship out. Doesn't matter what industry you look at, all of our manufacturing will always focus on local markets first and foremost. And we are also going to see even more consolidation in manufacture going forward. With advances in robotics and 3rd printing tech, I think we will start to see smaller and smaller factories, with bigger and bigger outputs. There is a coming paradigm shift for allot of companies that do this type of work allot like Detroit has already seen.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by #-3

I think the infrastructure is in place to turn Calgary into a Finance town. Very dense core, lots of office space, young well educated population, allot of people already work early/late/long hours. Looking at that this town really mirrors allot of the finance capitals of the world.

Techs a different one, not sure if it's that easy to attract that industry. San Fran grew organically from a few early successes, and Vancouver partly took advantage of being the closest place in North America to the gaming industry leaders in Asia. Both the city also have the advantage of being among the most attractive climates in the world, and the tech industry doesn't exactly have to deal with geography when considering locations, so they have the luxury of selecting places that are nice to live to set up shop, Calgary probably does OK on that front but not great.

Time difference pretty well kills finance as a sector for the west, London opens up at 1am Mountain time.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Time difference pretty well kills finance as a sector for the west, London opens up at 1am Mountain time.

Is that significantly worse than 3am on the east coast?

[#-3]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Time difference pretty well kills finance as a sector for the west, London opens up at 1am Mountain time.

That's true the UK is bad, but we are better a position for Asia.

I think China's 9-5 would equal 5pm-2am Mountain time vs 7pm-4am eastern. Running from 7am to midnight in Calgary you could hit all of Toronto, NY & Toyko & 80% Bejing hours.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

Is that significantly worse than 3am on the east coast?

Yes because New York and London work around each other, New York traders will start around 5 or 6, the guys in London will work until 7 or 8.
The travel time between the two is significant as well, my mate flys back and forth a couple of times a week, 3 hours is reasonable 9 or 10 is a day's work lost

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by #-3

That's true the UK is bad, but we are better a position for Asia.

I think China's 9-5 would equal 5pm-2am Mountain time vs 7pm-4am eastern. Running from 7am to midnight in Calgary you could hit all of Toronto, NY & Toyko & 80% Bejing hours.

I'll give you that, not sure it would be enough to move the business out of New York or Chicago though.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I'll give you that, not sure it would be enough to move the business out of New York or Chicago though.

Not saying it would be easy, but when looking a diversification look at what you have. Calgary needs an industry that traditionally gravitates to dense office cores, rural Alberta needs to lead in ag. and wind energy advancements, and Edmonton needs to refocus on manufacturing truck nuts.

[Duruss]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

There's never any point in trying to create an industry, what governments need to do is look at what's developing organically and nurture that.

I would guess there's a fair amount of oil and gas tech firms, pipe builders, valve casting, that kind of thing that serviced the domestic industry who's product is now 25 percent cheaper in the U.S., in fact an oil and gas manufacturing sector would be pretty good 'short' against low oil prices as its products would then become hugely cheaper as the dollar drops.

I see where you are going, but a company here that makes large equipment like coiled tubing units and pumpers got hammered by the drop in oil. Smaller easier to ship items seems like the way to get Americans to buy here, but only if cheaper. I think lots of Canadian manufactures like to price in Us dollars, so they may not actually offer a competitive product. But that is just my feeling.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by AltaGuy

I agree with whomever said it above: all these engineers seem like they'd be great at producing better and lots of wind/solar energy. There was a piece on CBC last night about silicon valley and how into solar they are - we have lots of sun and lots of engineers - why are we not building the crap out of these things?

It's hard to compete against Chinese manufacturing and Alberta's manufacturing isn't really geared for silicon. Even Germany, one of the great manufacturing and research economies in the world couldn't compete and many of its solar producers formed to take advantage of its huge solar subsidies are now dead.

And Silicon Valley isn't making solar panels, at least not there, it's about selling them to utilities and consumers and taking advantage of subsidies and renewable mandates.

[AltaGuy]

Originally Posted by accord1999

It's hard to compete against Chinese manufacturing and Alberta's manufacturing isn't really geared for silicon. Even Germany, one of the great manufacturing and research economies in the world couldn't compete and many of its solar producers formed to take advantage of its huge solar subsidies are now dead.

And Silicon Valley isn't making solar panels, at least not there, it's about selling them to utilities and consumers.

Thanks for your response! I think the investment and development, and then sales and business (after manufacture in China) could be possible though? I don't know - it just seems like energy is our strong suit, but we haven't hopped aboard current trends. If billions in silicon valley are being pumped into it, seems like something Alberta could get into in the long-run.

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

You want to diversify this province and make lots of money.

High Tech Weapons systems are where its at.

Nukes, Chemical and Biological. Precision guided munitions with a made in Alberta label.

Tanks APC's artillary pieces.

also it might make it easier to get a pipeline through if your sitting on a massive weapons stockpile.

Sorry, reading this late - this is an alternative to my suggestion of separation. Conquer them all, and impose an Alberta dictatorship on the rest of the country. Not sure if the rest of you have the stomach for labour camps and all powerful security police...

[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by AltaGuy

I agree with whomever said it above: all these engineers seem like they'd be great at producing better and lots of wind/solar energy. There was a piece on CBC last night about silicon valley and how into solar they are - we have lots of sun and lots of engineers - why are we not building the crap out of these things?

Inefficient, very expensive currently and they also have the issue of not being stored, save for a large battery bank which also has its high expense. Currently all solar and wind generation in Alberta operates 100% of the time. There's no stored capacity, so what happens on hot summer days where everyone's AC is running and we cut out coal generation? Hopefully we have a backup elsewhere in terms of Co gen facilities.

Unless you're talking about our engineers redesigning photovoltaic cells and batteries, simply putting up solar panels is a fart in a wind storm.