News and Features
The Future of Vancouver's Economy
By Frances Bula published Oct 1, 2011
Innovation, tourism and our proximity to Asia: A look into the factors that will shape our city's long-term prosperity
Once upon a time, Vancouver was a shipper of the endless resources produced in the province’s hinterland—logs, coal, minerals, oil. We were home base for powerhouses like MacMillan Bloedel, Westcoast Transmission, and Teck Cominco (and the accountants and lawyers who serviced them). Our role was clear. But then it blurred. Americans bought out many of our image-defining companies, and the head offices closed down. Weyerhaeuser, which took over MacBlo in 1999, still has some space in the old building, but the rest is leased out to high-powered law firms, small mining companies, and the Australian consulate. When North Carolina’s Duke Energy acquired Westcoast, the company’s distinctive head office was turned into condos.
Without name-brand resource captains or a recognizable industry hub—a Microsoft (like Seattle) or Nike (like Portland) or Silicon Valley (like San Francisco)—we’ve become a city with no clear understanding of what fuels our economy. In fact, many believe that we don’t really have a real economy, that we survive on lattes, made-for-TV movies, yoga pants, and illegal drugs. “You go to Calgary or Toronto or Ottawa and they know,” says Andrew Ramlo, from the Urban Futures Institute, a company in the business of economic and demographic number-crunching. “ ‘In Calgary, we dig holes in the ground and get oil.’ In Toronto, it’s ‘We’re a financial centre.’ Ottawa is a government town. But people in Vancouver have no idea. When you ask them, they just get this blank look on their faces.”
Robin Silvester believes he knows where Vancouver’s future lies. Standing in his office at the end of the Canada Place pier, behind the city’s original convention centre, he looks out the window of his wheelhouse-like office onto Burrard Inlet. The Hyundai Shanghai—stacked with 827 containers holding electronics, clothes, auto parts, furniture, and everything else China manufactures and we buy—is being unloaded. Meanwhile, the Tao Triumph is steaming out toward Lions Gate Bridge loaded with 7,300 tonnes of wood pellets headed for Japan.
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The Future of Vancouver’s Economy October 01.
“Once upon a time, Vancouver was a shipper of the endless resources produced in the province’s hinterland—logs, coal, minerals, oil.” Still is!
Very interesting article Frances: thanqxz . . .
“The mantra, as found in dozens of speeches and documents: our port is a day closer to Asia than L.A. In an industry where time and fuel are money, that’s a huge advantage. (A bonus selling point: we export so much that any ship offloading here is almost guaranteed a load back across the Pacific.)”
Huge advantage. Oh really! We’re still shipping raw logs (I watch ‘em from my dining room window every day) coal and tar sand sludge: sorry, no jobs, no wealth for BC in that . . .
As for hi tech, remember the 1999-2000 dot-com bubble!
“Robin Silvester, with his Lancashire accent, believes he knows where Vancouver’s future lies.” May I, with my Yorkshire accent adjust his comment to better read. “Robin Silvester . . . knows . . . Vancouver lies.”
So let’s do the mantra.
Great circle route:
Los Angeles – Singapore 7,621 nm.
Vancouver – Singapore 6,920 nm.
Marine V-S great circle route saves 690 nm by container vessel. Marine, Ridley Island-S even shorter.
However route point LA to route point S is still the same distance: something has to make up the short fall. I5 trucks can do that with one Vancouver, or RI, very costly transfer, unnecessary on the thru route. Marine container thru costs v’s I5 trucks+transfer+marine costs, no brainer . . .
“. . . tall, lanky 43-year-old engineer with a strong-featured face and the look of a nuclear-particle researcher,” That’s good to know, “strong featured face”, gives me no end of confidence and “ Silvester arrived from Sydney two-and-a-half years ago to take charge of Port Metro Vancouver, an entity some city-dwellers don’t even know exists.”
I hope he doesn’t do Sydney to Vancouver: “In Sydney, pressure from residential development eventually pushed operations down the coast. That’s not really a danger here . . .” Oh yes it is. Look at Richmond’s waterfront.
As for a “strong featured face”: At eighty-two I wish. I dunno though, my sailor days were over sixty years ago but I thinq we are blowing smoke again . . .
And, “. . . it’s still a young, green shoot.” Now where have I heard that before?
Hang on to your jock straps. Sylvester or no Sylvester, we’re in for interesting times . . .
Global warming and the consequent wet cool sumers will kill Vancouvers tourism industry Our 4 to 6 weeks of nice weather per year cannot sustain this industry. People who come here once for a cold wet summer vacation will not come back no matter how many Starbucks and sushi restaurants we have. And when rich Chinese investors stop buying our real estate, watch out. I for one as someone who grew up in Vancouver will welcome the return to a slower pace and less "world class city" pretensions.
