Is Petronas departure a tragedy or an opportunity?

Last week, Malaysian energy giant Petronas announced an end to its controversial LNG mega-project in B.C. due to changes in global energy markets.

While proponents of the project claim this is a “tragedy for Canada,” there’s a more positive way of looking at things. After several years with B.C.’s economic policies held hostage to the myopic idea of an imminent LNG boom, letting go of the increasingly unfeasible LNG pipe dream presents a valuable opportunity to reimagine economic development in rural B.C.

While it can be risky to bet on where a market or sector is going, it’s proving even riskier to invest in the resources, industries and technologies of the past. The writing had been on the wall for a number of years regarding the risks of the sector. With the departure of American investment firm Apache Corp from B.C. LNG in 2014, a course correction could (or should) have been considered years ago. Petronas is the final punctuation mark in that discussion. This at a time when global growth in sustainable energy technologies is growing rapidly, inviting a ‘just transition’ to workers in the resource sector.

It’s not the first time that a government has bet on a single industry, injecting millions of tax dollars, only for the free market to cruelly snuff that dream. Or to prop up a failing or struggling sector. Canadians lost $3.5 billion of public dollars after the Harper government and Province of Ontario bailed out Canada’s auto sector after the 2008 financial crisis. According to one recent report, the B.C. Liberal government spent one million public dollars per day trying to make the numbers work for Petronas’s Pacific NorthWest LNG mega-project. Imagine if one million dollars per day was invested in B.C.’s rural communities for value-added sustainable forestry products, cottage industry food-growers, ecotourism, light-boutique manufacturing, arts and culture, capacity building for small-scale infrastructure bids and digital connectivity?

Instead of chasing global corporations in sunset industries in the hope that they can exploit unsustainable and polluting resources in rural communities, why not invest in communities to create prosperity on their own terms? This approach to economic development, referred to as community economic development or CED, works within communities to build up their capacity, capitalize on their unique strengths and put assets to work in creative ways.

Rural communities have been told for too long that it is resource extraction or nothing when it comes to government support of economic development. With the exit of Petronas, we have a chance to embrace the alternatives with a well-developed body of knowledge and successful models to draw from.

We have successful Aboriginal social enterprises building sustainable businesses in Indigenous communities; new forms of community investment supporting the growth of local markets and startups; innovations in food systems and agricultural development; and with billions of federal and provincial infrastructure dollars flowing to B.C. regions, an incredible opportunity exists to ensure small, independent businesses, social enterprise, co-ops and First Nations-owned ventures can successfully bid on contracts and benefit from ‘set-asides’ and the inclusion of joint-venture and social-procurement policies in government request-for-proposals.

Innovation and entrepreneurship isn’t something exclusive to cities, though cities can often be where the education, training and resources to help unlock the potential of community innovators and entrepreneurs can be found. It’s time to empower problem-solvers in innovation and entrepreneurship and strengthen our economic resiliency as we build more inclusive and sustainable forms of community wealth.

It’s time to chart a new course for B.C.’s economy together. Let’s embrace the opportunity.

Wes Regan is director of Simon Fraser University’s Community Economic Development programs. The SFU Certificate Program for Community Economic Development is currently accepting applicants to its 2017-18 cohort.