What do Gloria Gaynor and B.C have in common?

Here's a hint...they're both surviving!

Some of you may get the above reference right-a-way and some of you may need some prompting. In 1978 Gloria Gaynor released a song entitled "I Will Survive!" It became a massive hit in the disco era. You've probably heard the opening lines which go like this "At first I was afraid, I was petrified, thinking I could live without you by my side. And after spending nights thinking how you did me wrong, I grew strong, and I learned how to get along... I will survive."

By now you should be up on your feet, disco ball spinning, dancing and singing loudly. Ok maybe that's just me and my wife. Back to reality...

Anyway, the Business Council of British Columbia just released another awesome report (I trust that you can sense my sarcasm) entitled "2024 BC Prosperity Index." (see report here)

Here's the summary: "BC Surviving, Not Thriving!"

The following was taken directly from the BCBC website.

According to the 2024 B.C. Prosperity Index, released today by the Business Council of British Columbia (BCBC), B.C. places 11th out of 21 peer jurisdictions for overall prosperity. 

The Index, developed with the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS), compares B.C.’s performance on a range of economic, business, social, and environmental indicators. The province is compared among the ten Canadian provinces, the Pacific U.S. states of California, Oregon, and Washington, and the countries of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

Like other Canadian provinces, B.C. performs well on social and environmental indicators compared to peer international jurisdictions. However, on business and economic well-being indicators, B.C. and most provinces tend to underperform relative to their international peers. 

Here are the rankings by category.

The ones that really stand out to me are the lowest 4 (see below starting with the lowest ranking)

1. housing affordability (18 out of 21)
2. economic well being at (15 out of 21)
3. innovation (13 out of 21)
4. income in-equality (13 out of 21)
5. labour productivity (12 out of 21)

“There’s no medal for 11th place, and for good reason,” says report co-author and BCBC Vice President of Policy, David Williams. “For young families and people aspiring to build a future in this province, prosperity is critical. B.C. has areas of strength, but also areas of weakness it needs to address to ensure we do not lose our best and brightest people to other jurisdictions with better prospects.” 

“B.C. needs to aim higher,” says Williams. “There’s room for improvement in innovation, labour productivity, unemployment, and housing affordability, for example. This is especially true when compared to our international peers, who score significantly higher in such areas.” 

According to Williams, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity for B.C. to learn from the successes of other jurisdictions and adopt similar strategies. He emphasizes that B.C. needs to aim higher, focusing on income generation and private sector job growth, especially as several mega capital projects that have been boosting the provincial economy in recent years wind down. 

So how do we get this done? How do we fire up innovation, labour productivity, the high-value jobs of the future? This won't be easy. It will take years/decades of concerted and focused effort by all of us.

Personally, I think it starts with the key points I laid out in my previous posts namely; Be Bold and look for the Easy Wins to get started. More on this stuff in the near future. But, the long game needs to focus on the goal of reindustrializing Canada, and British Columbia, in our case.

Wikipedia defines reindustrialization as the economic, social and political process of organizing national resources for the purpose of reestablishing industries and reinvigorating national economies. Now the naysayers will argue that reindustrialization (or deglobalization) is impossible due to our interconnected world and that it will lead to inflation. Well, like most things in life I think the answer is... "it depends." Michael Porter, the father of competitive theory explains that countries really don't have competitive advantages but that corporations do. He argues that the country's home market is what allows for companies to develop their competitive advantages. The home market must provide the conditions necessary for success. Some of these factors include the availability of resources, an educated and skilled workforce, a consumer market with adequate purchasing power, a mature mindset towards innovation, related and supportive industries and services, and policies and regulations that spur innovation and productivity. Over regulation is a killer.

We live in a country that is blessed with immense natural resources, some of the brightest people in the world, that is next to the biggest market in the world (USA) but yet, we can't seam to get it together. Its time for real leadership. Like I said, this ain't gonna be easy. But, like Gloria Gaynor sang,

"You think I'd crumble? You think I'd lay down and die? No, not I, I will survive!"

Break out the vintage platform shoes and start dancing everybody.

Ben

p.s. stay tuned for more industrial matters in the near future.