Northeast B.C. business leaders say their region has a bounty of investment opportunities, but very few Vancouver-based companies are taking advantage of them.
In fact, Calgary and Edmonton-based companies are leading B.C.’s natural gas boom and cementing their position in a part of the province that many say has more in common with the Prairies than it does the West Coast.
During an energy conference in Fort St. John last week, Business in Vancouver asked Premier Gordon Campbell why Vancouver and the northeast are disconnected, and whether or not Vancouver’s business community is missing out.
“I’m sure that there are people who are missing out on opportunities in the northeast because there’s such a huge array of opportunities,” Campbell said. “It’s not unusual for the connections between Calgary and Edmonton to be closer to this part of the province. There’s a lot of people in Vancouver that have offices that also work up in the Peace [Country] and I think more and more they’re seeing the opportunities that are represented in the Northern Rockies and the Peace.”
Doug Bloom, president of Spectra Energy Transmission West, said the gap between Vancouver and the northeast is historical and geographical in nature. Spectra owns much of the province’s natural gas pipelines and plants. B.C.’s fertile shale gas industry is turning heads in Vancouver as well as Calgary and Edmonton, he added.
“You’ll get some people up in northeast B.C. who cheer for the Edmonton Eskimos, no question about that, but I think it’s changing,” said Bloom. “I think there’s a growing understanding that we have a tremendous resource base up in northeast B.C., and as forestry has fallen on awful hard times and as mining has been cyclical and fallen on hard times in the recent past, the industry that has been growing through all that is the natural gas industry … more and more you’re seeing economic impacts originating in northeast B.C. but are being felt in Vancouver.”
Check out next week’s print edition of BIV for more about business in northeast B.C.