Business leaders to set stage for economic growth

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This article was published 09/12/2017 (2831 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The narrative around the new Team Manitoba provincial economic development initiative suggests that after spending a year and a half working on the fiscal management of the province, the Pallister government is ready to turn its attention to economic development.

A new working group to advise the province will be headed by Payworks founder and CEO Barb Gamey and former Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce president Dave Angus.

Their job isn’t going to be to help the province pick winners, but rather come up with some ideas for the right kind of organization to put in place and accomplish this “bold and modern approach to economic development.”

Gamey is a very successful entrepreneur with superior organizational skills and a community-minded business leader who will chair the city-wide United Way campaign next year.

Angus, who is no stranger to these kinds of provincial economic development committees having served on some with the former NDP government, was also the author of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce’s Bold campaign from earlier this decade, which attempted to encourage government and the business community to think outside the box.

Perhaps it was fitting that the day Premier Brian Pallister announced the two experts would lead the initiative, Angus was in Oregon talking to the chamber of commerce there about the Bold campaign.

The province commissioned a report from Deloitte several weeks ago on economic development strategies and part of the advice was to create a new mechanism for the province to manage economic development. Angus and Gamey, and the team they will put together, are going to advise the best structure to ensure integration and collaboration to optimize the diversified economy that characterizes the province’s business community.

“We’re going to look at some governance options, discuss models, consult with government and partners and make some recommendations on the optimal model,” said Gamey

There are plenty of dedicated business people running economic development organizations in the province who have had their budgets slashed and have been left in suspended animation waiting for the province to arrive at this stage.

“There has been lots of uncertainty since Premier Pallister took office,” Angus acknowledged. “Decisions have been hard to come by regarding economic development. Not that it was negative, just there was no path forward.”

As the co-chair of a fiscal review committee prior to the last budget, Angus said he knows first-hand that the province had its hands full dealing with budget management issues.

“That had been a lot of the focus,” he said. “Now, my sense is they are ready to pivot and provide the certainty the business community is looking for. I think it is a ray of hope that we have a provincial government that really wants to make this a high priority. That has been missing as well.”

It’s early days and neither Gamey or Angus have been briefed enough to know more thoroughly what it is they’ve got themselves into.

The Deloitte report is brand new and has not been made public, but the premier has mentioned such issues as duplication and lack of co-ordination in the way the province provides support.

Gamey said one thing that will likely be addressed is the way data is collected to help analyze program effectiveness.

“We need to develop metrics so that we can know if we are moving the needle on economic development,” she said.

That will be tricky, but something that in these days of big data should not be beyond the realm of the doable.

Communicating the vision to all parties concerned is also part of the process.

Angus said the approach that’s agreed on is something that should be on the desk of the heads of all the economic development agencies, all the post-secondary institutions, as well as all the other provincial departments that touch on economic development.

Michael Legary, the former IT entrepreneur who’s now working with both the city and the province advising on innovation strategies, is helping to co-ordinate the new Team Manitoba initiative.

He said everyone learned a lot from the Amazon HQ2 pitch that was hustled together in a short period of time. Now, the province wants to get something in place that will work for the long term.

“From a staffing perspective, the intent from the province is not to build a large new entity,” Legary said. “It is about building a very streamlined business-focused, business-accountable entity that enables the other partners (access to) the other tools that are already out there.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca