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Edmonton Companies News & Discussion


Interesting to see how Miami's mayor has been a vocal booster of attracting business to the city, and most recently, has been very vocal about working to bring tech and financial companies to the city. And before anyone says Edmonton is not Miami or Florida has no tax, I get it, but the point is to see "case studies" or examples of how other cities outreach, pitch and ultimately land corporations...something this city and current council does not seem to do or do well or has very little successful track record of doing.
 
'Edmonton's Economic Action Plan' is going to Executive Committee next Monday, April 12th. Principle 4 of the plan is quite apt: We Will Remain and become a Destination of Choice for Talen and Capital'

At least there is a plan in place to attract more head offices and such, but I wonder why it took until 2021 to formalize one.
 
Avenuer said:
'Edmonton's Economic Action Plan' is going to Executive Committee next Monday, April 12th. Principle 4 of the plan is quite apt: We Will Remain and become a Destination of Choice for Talen and Capital'

At least there is a plan in place to attract more head offices and such, but I wonder why it took until 2021 to formalize one.
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Do you happen to have a link to this plan you can share? I can't seem to find it online.
 
Avenuer said:
Go to the April 2021 calendar on https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/council-committee-meetings.aspx,click on the April 12th Executive Committee date and select Agenda (HTML). Item 6.3 of the agenda is the Economic Action Plan.
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Thanks. For reference, this is the document link. https://pub-edmonton.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=87109

I took a look through this and I wish I didnt, I cannot say my confidence was boosted materially.

"Principle 4 We will remain and become a destination of choice for talent and capital - Action plan performance measures: satisfaction survey results of clients using programs"..........no wonder no impactful material results have been seen in years, yikes. Like bringing a wet noodle to a gun fight.
 
https://betakit.com/tec-edmonton-to-...ns-on-june-30/

Can someone more in the know elaborate on this? I cant imagine having TEC shut down so that the U of A and (shudders) the City do their own thing is great progress but I am interested to hear others' thoughts?

Also, Innovate Edmonton, TEC Edmonton, Startup Edmonton, all part of the EEDC, this all seems rather convoluted and confusing. Who does what? I feel like this has classic City of Edmonton disfunction written all over it.
 
My understanding is that this has been in the works for awhile now. The UofA wants to focus more on R&D/support/education/PD and less on commercialization.

The City/et al. will provide that arm and do so in a much more conducive way for those with intellectual property, rights and dollars that come with them.

But I am not that close to the industry and could be wrong with my assertions.
 
Ok thanks for the response. I hope this is for the better and isnt a way of taking two steps backwards from the same many topics we have talked about on this thread about needing to do more in the tech space, not less.
 
^And more positive news - Edmonton-based BioNeutra has received a $2.9M federal grant that will allow it to move its production operations previously done outside Canada to the City. Another company planning to stay put here.


A year ago:
LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Financial Times today named BioNeutra Global Corporation, the Canadian manufacturer of healthy sugar alternative VitaFiber, as one of the 500 fastest growing companies in the 20 countries composing the Americas. BioNeutra joins Tesla, Uber, Netflix and Paypal in the newspaper’s inaugural ranking of growth companies listed in a special edition in today’s paper.
 
I noticed Edmonton has gained a lot of jobs over the past few months in the labour force survey. Richard Florida will tell you that trying to attract companies to relocate to your city is pointless. It is about growing the organic base of startup companies and becoming a magnet for talent. Focus should be on things like downtown cleanliness, festivals, transit, attractions, urban form, and maintaining affordability, not corporate relocations.
 
occidentalcapital said:
I noticed Edmonton has gained a lot of jobs over the past few months in the labour force survey. Richard Florida will tell you that trying to attract companies to relocate to your city is pointless. It is about growing the organic base of startup companies and becoming a magnet for talent. Focus should be on things like downtown cleanliness, festivals, transit, attractions, urban form, and maintaining affordability, not corporate relocations.
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As we are the most affordable 'big' (greater than 1 million pop) in Canada, we as a city need to be pushing the affordability factor to everyone nationwide and even globally. The fact that most middle-income people in Canada can still afford to purchase a nice home here, as well as low-ish commercial and industrial real estate prices, should be a big draw.
 
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