Promoting growth is in all of our best interests

Lessons from Alberta and its ascendancy as an economic powerhouse, its recent slowdown post 2008 and the renaissance that province has recently enjoyed may assist with implementing proactive sustainable development plans that offer solutions to enhance our province’s longterm growth strategy.

Saskatchewan’s business climate continues to improve but we remain challenged not only by a lack of capacity in fiscal and labour market supply, government regulations and red tape, but also in that we fail to accept that we alone determine whether we can reach our population targets for growth. We in Saskatchewan have a hand in putting plans in place, servicing the land and getting ahead of the demand for serviced land and we alone control our own future.

Knowing all this, one has to wonder why, if there is any gravel in the gears of our economic engine, we alone have put it there and left it there. There should be little in our way in terms of reaching 1.2 million people by 2020 and building from the housing level of 10,000 housing units per year that will pave the way for continued growth and prosperity.

All of us are benefiting from the new momentum in the province and those of us who believe in continuous improvement to sustain this momentum all need to make sure there is nothing we are doing to slow the process. We cannot have one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. There is clearly a mindset prevailing in some communities and regions that seems bent on adversarial posturing, rather than strengthening Team Saskatchewan working on win-win initiatives. This catches the eyes of the interested investors and migrants alike, and in the competitive global environment we can’t take the chance that we would unknowingly act to deter anyone or any business from choosing to make Saskatchewan and our communities and regions the place to work and invest.

We all have a role in making sure policy decisions, whether on housing, education, health, taxation, infrastructure or government budgets in general, all serve the best interests of our municipalities but most of all the province of Saskatchewan.

There have been significant changes to the policy environment set in place by the provincial government and many municipalities in recent years that certainly have gone a great distance to make our communities, regions and province more attractive in the global context. However, we should never be complacent and avoid taking positions that negate all the good initiatives to date.

Consider the great strides in labour market recruitment, retention and attraction, reforms of decades-old rules, bylaws and regulations the high-level collaboration with other jurisdictions nationally and internationally. All of these initiatives and efforts and others have propelled us to new highs in population, housing construction and investment activity. Without many of these seemingly unrelated successes our land development and building industries couldn’t commit the vast financial resources and attract the contractors, entrepreneurs and investors we needed to help drive the building and development efforts.

There are very few policy decisions that don’t somehow eventually affect planning, development or the housing continuum in some manner. It is particularly frustrating when some decisions made at municipal or even senior levels of government are clearly at crosspurposes with the provincial government’s Saskatchewan Plan for Growth and are not in the best interests of the province.

We need to reconsider, and many communities have been doing so successfully, whether our narrow agendas further the cause of job creation and economic development. Many hands makes light lifting and rather than any municipality fearing what they lose when another gains, maybe we can appreciate that we are indeed better having part of something instead of having all of nothing.

Alan Thomarat is the president and CEO of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association — Saskatchewan and the Saskatoon & Region Home Builders Association. He also serves as a director on the national board of the Canadian Home Builders’

Association in Ottawa