I took this job three years ago at the
height of the most economic depressing
environment in calgary’s history what
was I thinking it’s not just me or you
that wonder that certainly I know that
my mother is looking down at me and she
is saying if there is a hard path or
Road you will find it and certainly this
time you outdid yourself it’s been a
hard road for Calgary and there’s people
that continue to suffer during this
downturn there’s no question about it
but the reality is is that we’ve led the
country with GDP growth last year and
we’re forecasted to show very modest
growth for the next couple of years now
there’s some people most of those people
in Ottawa that they think that things
are back to normal and that we have a
healthy economy but the reality is the
energy industry has changed forever our
number-one competitor her client became
our number one competitor and of the
global energy supply map has changed
forever we are now in an intense global
market share war in those energy
companies that occupied the office space
of downtown Calgary are no longer going
to be the big job creators or occupy
that office space like they have in the
past it is a time of uncertainty for
Calgary like many other jurisdictions
we’re facing times of volatility
uncertainty complexity in ambiguity and
certainly we know that the pipeline
challenges that we’ve had and the
lengthy regulatory process that we’re
under all the time is creating great
uncertainty and risk for the investors
and they attach that to our economy what
I like to call investment purgatory so
just remind them that a life without
petroleum products is probably somewhere
around 1920 to 1930 and if they’re okay
riding around on a moose buck-naked then
that’s good for them and then you look
to the to the south of us and certainly
Trump is creating uncertainty all on his
own but for us here in Calgary what we
care about is tax reform in the for the
first time in many many decades Canadian
companies are at par with US companies
from a corporate tax perspective and
although I’m confident that this is not
a threat to us as a standalone when you
marry that with this investment
purgatory it becomes increasingly
difficult to attract and retain good
companies and great people here in
Calgary and then of course there’s NAFTA
that’s creating uncertainty for
Canadians and for albertans a lot of
people don’t know that 85% of Alberta
companies don’t export anyway anywhere
this should be a wake-up call for us the
good news is trade agreements like Sita
and CP TPP whoever made that acronym out
are an opportunity for us to take Goods
and products and services to new markets
and new customers but out of all of
those threats the thing that keeps me up
more than anything else at night is the
risk of innovation and technology and
the reality of that is is that that will
put us further behind than anything else
from a global competitiveness
perspective more than any policy any
regulatory process any political trend
or any economic trend we’re good at
navigating around those and if we don’t
find a workaround solution then we just
and if you think about this the
technology is no longer a sector it is
across every single industry you heard a
lot about that today and we are truly in
the industrial revolution 4.0 or
industry 4.0 and compared to the
previous industrial revolutions which
were quite linear the introduction of
steam the introduction of energy the
introduction of IT and automation the
exponential change that is happening
right now with the convergence of
physical digital and virtual
technologies is alarming whether it be
artificial intelligence big data cyber
security RTR VR blockchain 3d printing
autonomous vehicles it is all coming at
us together in converging we hardly know
how to deal with one of these
technologies not to mention when they’re
layered on top of each other and if you
think about companies like Google Amazon
Microsoft or Apple who typically focused
a lot on the consumer they’re now
looking at these industrial sectors and
thinking this is our big opportunity
industrial sectors like energy
agriculture transportation and logistics
healthcare infrastructure and companies
like Cisco and Intel Irsay saying that
this is going to be 80% of their future
business and it will provide
productivity predictability and
efficiency in all of the industrial
sectors and through that who inject
fifteen trillion capital-t trillion into
the global GDP value of the world this
is all good news for calgary we have a
strength and a focus on these industrial
sectors energy agriculture
transportation and we’re growing and
things like healthcare and life science
we are certainly at a crossroad but if
you think about what we have here we
have head offices which are clients that
customers are looking for we have the
highest concentration of headquarters in
the country that happened to be an
energy agriculture and transportation we
have the highest concentration of
millionaires in this country they may
not be as rich as they used to be but
there’s still millionaires and they have
this unlocked capital that they are used
to investing in below the ground
innovation that they can and should
invest in above the ground innovation
and technology that will help them be
more productive more predictable and
more efficient we’re certainly at a
crossroad here in Calgary but the
reality is we have the right to win to
be the Innovation Centre for those
industries now I’m going to tell you a
little story I know what you’re all
thinking when is she going to stop
talking about Amazon Amazon was a great
experience for Calgary and a great
experience for Calgary economic
development first of all they phoned and
said by the way everybody walks around
Amazon saying when they commit to
something to do at work you bet I’ll
fight a bear for you which is great
that’s the highest form of flattery but
Calgary also got a hundred and fifty
million dollar 150 million media hits on
CNN Financial Times New York Times
Seattle Times Seattle Times Seattle
Times but the greatest learning came
from the call that we got from the woman
that was running the project out of
Washington DC and she phoned within
minutes I used to say 20 now I say seven
next week I’ll say five but she did
phone and she debriefed with us and I
asked her a couple of questions the
first question I asked her I said did
you understand that we have premium
office space available in this city that
you could move into tomorrow
she said yes did you understand that
when you’re fully ramped up you could
save 2.2 billion dollars a year just on
healthcare and wages she said yes
did you understand the big offer we put
on the table
she said yes did you understand that we
have a long history of building highly
educated talent pools here and it barely
has an impact on our infrastructure or
social issues she said yes but we also
looked at that talent and it was a
data-driven exercise and we saw that you
don’t have a history nor do you have a
funnel or a pipeline to build the talent
required for the new economy software
engineers data scientists coders and
programmers you know what she was right
if you compare Calgary to the rest of
the country of our tech talent all the
other cities have somewhere between
fifty and sixty three percent of their
tech talent our software engineers data
scientists coders and programmers
Calgary has 25 percent which isn’t
surprising given that we were so focused
on the energy industry and we have
really good high quality petroleum
engineers and reservoir engineers and
when we looked at it further we realized
that all the tech companies that are
here have a thousand jobs open today
some of them that they couldn’t fill for
a year and they what jobs were they
software engineers data scientists
coders and programmers but I’m a
believer you have to persevere like
Winston Churchill said when things are
going to hell there’s nothing to do but
move forward so I picked myself up out
of the fetal position in the corner of
my office and I went to the government
of Alberta and I said look we have a
problem if we’re gonna survive in the
new economy and own the innovation in
our industrial sectors and be more
competitive globally in those industrial
sectors than we need more talent so in
fairness to them within 60 days they
announced 50 million dollars for 3,000
tech spots in the education system
and they’ve also we’ve been working with
the post secondaries to roll out
customized and particularly the
University of Calgary to
to do programs where we can have our
engineers do two semesters and become a
good software engineer or a data
scientist and believe me we are out
recruiting too now we may not get Amazon
headquarters but we want companies that
will pull talent into this community and
in fact we’re a tech fest this week in
Toronto recruiting talent to come to
Calgary because in spite of what they
think a horse and a buggy in Waterloo is
not as exciting as the Rocky Mountain
playground now I don’t want to leave you
with the wrong impression
I’m from material by the way I can say
that I don’t want to leave you with the
wrong impression I have to tell you that
the innovation ecosystem has been
quietly strengthening here in Calgary in
our next economic wave and the height of
that economic wave will be determined on
how we embrace technology round out our
talent pool and strengthen our economic
ecosystem innovation ecosystem here in
Calgary and I’m quite proud of this
community because it was only 14 months
ago that I was sitting in a room have at
our economic summit and somebody and I
think it was the mayor which is
interesting all in itself said you’re
not moving fast enough and in 14 months
14 months the things that have happened
have been amazing in this town from this
building the nucleus to the platform to
the Edison to rocket space to
rainforests to creative destructive labs
to the entrepreneurial hub up at the
University to Calgary technologies inc
reinventing itself and focused on scale
up to Calgary economic development
buying the assets of start-up in
reinventing that program to the
university starting to focus more on
tech transfer with more favorable IP
protocol to the City of Calgary giving
Calgary Economic Development a hundred
million dollars to invest in catalytic
and transfer transformative projects
here in Calgary now I can see that money
but I can’t touch it
just for the record so I won’t be giving
it out but it’s interesting and
increasingly we’re seeing entrepreneurs
come together with corporate corporate
partners and the real success will come
although it’s not as mature is if we
build out that you know these innovation
ecosystem and make it as concentrated
and successful as we have the energy
ecosystem and you think about this
eight-block radius in downtown Calgary
this is infrastructure innovation
ecosystems are clamoring to create a
place where people collide and
collaborate a police place you can do
eight meetings in a day and you do deal
on a handshake in a Tim Horton’s line so
it is important that we overlay this
innovation ecosystem over top of our
industrial ecosystems we have to
recreate them and we have to layer them
on top I know that we can be successful
in this city when every corporation in
this city knows where to go to me to
start up that can solve their problem or
a scale-up company that can solve their
problem where companies that are in the
energy industry the transportation
industry aerospace industry and
agriculture are all working on common
technologies to solve the problems and
make their industries more efficient
where young people can be mentored and
learned from the seasoned people or in
the case of technology might be the
seasoned people learning from the young
but I am confident that Calgary can do
it and the reason that I’m confident
that Calgary can do it because we are
jurisdiction that persevere and embraces
ingenuity we are a place where the
indigenous people came in in spite of
the harsh conditions they thrived and
lived here for thousands of years we are
jurisdiction that managed and navigated
the toughest topography in the country
to put the CP rail through the Rocky
Mountains and we are a jurisdiction
where the energy industry cleverly
figured out how to go three kilometers
five kilometers across and hit a bathtub
size target and extract really difficult
product at a very difficult geology to
serve the world and more recently or
recently just five years ago next month
this is a city that rallied around each
other
and helped each other out to get the
city up and operating with a few it
within a few short days so people a
million people could descend upon here
for the Calgary Stampede this is a city
where nothing is impossible this is a
city come hell or high water that we
make sure that nothing is impossible now
this history of this jurisdiction has
always inspired me it has always
inspired me now I grew up with four
older brothers not these ones these ones
look nice it was such an could have been
a such a negative force for me it didn’t
matter if we were swimming or skiing or
skating or simply running up the stairs
of our house everything was a
competition and I had to embrace it and
fight like hell but I was brought up to
believe that you have to persevere and
that nothing is impossible
you can beat those boys even as mean as
they are like many of you I didn’t I
didn’t grow up here
in Calgary I came here and in fact I
came here crying don’t tell my boss that
by the way but it was a city that I felt
like I belonged and sure part of it is
because of the quality of life we have
here with this rocky mountain playground
and the fact that it is a safe community
and the fact that I could afford a home
on an airline salary that was funny by
and the fact that it was this is a place
of inclusiveness and it’s a meritocracy
and if you want to work hard you can do
well here but more importantly it was
because they were surrounded by people
who embraced and breathed and breathed
the concept and the idea that nothing is
impossible this is why I love my job
because I believe with being focused and
working together that we can accomplish
this
if Calgary was a stock I would recommend
you all buy it there is no reason why
Calgary cannot be the place of choice in
Canada where the world’s best
entrepreneurs will come here and they
will embrace innovation and they will
create solutions for us to deliver
products to the rest of the world and
really and we will deliver human is the
highest victory the greatest things that
humans need safe food between energy
easy transportation and good health
nothing is impossible in Calgary thank
you very much [Music]
height of the most economic depressing
environment in calgary’s history what
was I thinking it’s not just me or you
that wonder that certainly I know that
my mother is looking down at me and she
is saying if there is a hard path or
Road you will find it and certainly this
time you outdid yourself it’s been a
hard road for Calgary and there’s people
that continue to suffer during this
downturn there’s no question about it
but the reality is is that we’ve led the
country with GDP growth last year and
we’re forecasted to show very modest
growth for the next couple of years now
there’s some people most of those people
in Ottawa that they think that things
are back to normal and that we have a
healthy economy but the reality is the
energy industry has changed forever our
number-one competitor her client became
our number one competitor and of the
global energy supply map has changed
forever we are now in an intense global
market share war in those energy
companies that occupied the office space
of downtown Calgary are no longer going
to be the big job creators or occupy
that office space like they have in the
past it is a time of uncertainty for
Calgary like many other jurisdictions
we’re facing times of volatility
uncertainty complexity in ambiguity and
certainly we know that the pipeline
challenges that we’ve had and the
lengthy regulatory process that we’re
under all the time is creating great
uncertainty and risk for the investors
and they attach that to our economy what
I like to call investment purgatory so
just remind them that a life without
petroleum products is probably somewhere
around 1920 to 1930 and if they’re okay
riding around on a moose buck-naked then
that’s good for them and then you look
to the to the south of us and certainly
Trump is creating uncertainty all on his
own but for us here in Calgary what we
care about is tax reform in the for the
first time in many many decades Canadian
companies are at par with US companies
from a corporate tax perspective and
although I’m confident that this is not
a threat to us as a standalone when you
marry that with this investment
purgatory it becomes increasingly
difficult to attract and retain good
companies and great people here in
Calgary and then of course there’s NAFTA
that’s creating uncertainty for
Canadians and for albertans a lot of
people don’t know that 85% of Alberta
companies don’t export anyway anywhere
this should be a wake-up call for us the
good news is trade agreements like Sita
and CP TPP whoever made that acronym out
are an opportunity for us to take Goods
and products and services to new markets
and new customers but out of all of
those threats the thing that keeps me up
more than anything else at night is the
risk of innovation and technology and
the reality of that is is that that will
put us further behind than anything else
from a global competitiveness
perspective more than any policy any
regulatory process any political trend
or any economic trend we’re good at
navigating around those and if we don’t
find a workaround solution then we just
and if you think about this the
technology is no longer a sector it is
across every single industry you heard a
lot about that today and we are truly in
the industrial revolution 4.0 or
industry 4.0 and compared to the
previous industrial revolutions which
were quite linear the introduction of
steam the introduction of energy the
introduction of IT and automation the
exponential change that is happening
right now with the convergence of
physical digital and virtual
technologies is alarming whether it be
artificial intelligence big data cyber
security RTR VR blockchain 3d printing
autonomous vehicles it is all coming at
us together in converging we hardly know
how to deal with one of these
technologies not to mention when they’re
layered on top of each other and if you
think about companies like Google Amazon
Microsoft or Apple who typically focused
a lot on the consumer they’re now
looking at these industrial sectors and
thinking this is our big opportunity
industrial sectors like energy
agriculture transportation and logistics
healthcare infrastructure and companies
like Cisco and Intel Irsay saying that
this is going to be 80% of their future
business and it will provide
productivity predictability and
efficiency in all of the industrial
sectors and through that who inject
fifteen trillion capital-t trillion into
the global GDP value of the world this
is all good news for calgary we have a
strength and a focus on these industrial
sectors energy agriculture
transportation and we’re growing and
things like healthcare and life science
we are certainly at a crossroad but if
you think about what we have here we
have head offices which are clients that
customers are looking for we have the
highest concentration of headquarters in
the country that happened to be an
energy agriculture and transportation we
have the highest concentration of
millionaires in this country they may
not be as rich as they used to be but
there’s still millionaires and they have
this unlocked capital that they are used
to investing in below the ground
innovation that they can and should
invest in above the ground innovation
and technology that will help them be
more productive more predictable and
more efficient we’re certainly at a
crossroad here in Calgary but the
reality is we have the right to win to
be the Innovation Centre for those
industries now I’m going to tell you a
little story I know what you’re all
thinking when is she going to stop
talking about Amazon Amazon was a great
experience for Calgary and a great
experience for Calgary economic
development first of all they phoned and
said by the way everybody walks around
Amazon saying when they commit to
something to do at work you bet I’ll
fight a bear for you which is great
that’s the highest form of flattery but
Calgary also got a hundred and fifty
million dollar 150 million media hits on
CNN Financial Times New York Times
Seattle Times Seattle Times Seattle
Times but the greatest learning came
from the call that we got from the woman
that was running the project out of
Washington DC and she phoned within
minutes I used to say 20 now I say seven
next week I’ll say five but she did
phone and she debriefed with us and I
asked her a couple of questions the
first question I asked her I said did
you understand that we have premium
office space available in this city that
you could move into tomorrow
she said yes did you understand that
when you’re fully ramped up you could
save 2.2 billion dollars a year just on
healthcare and wages she said yes
did you understand the big offer we put
on the table
she said yes did you understand that we
have a long history of building highly
educated talent pools here and it barely
has an impact on our infrastructure or
social issues she said yes but we also
looked at that talent and it was a
data-driven exercise and we saw that you
don’t have a history nor do you have a
funnel or a pipeline to build the talent
required for the new economy software
engineers data scientists coders and
programmers you know what she was right
if you compare Calgary to the rest of
the country of our tech talent all the
other cities have somewhere between
fifty and sixty three percent of their
tech talent our software engineers data
scientists coders and programmers
Calgary has 25 percent which isn’t
surprising given that we were so focused
on the energy industry and we have
really good high quality petroleum
engineers and reservoir engineers and
when we looked at it further we realized
that all the tech companies that are
here have a thousand jobs open today
some of them that they couldn’t fill for
a year and they what jobs were they
software engineers data scientists
coders and programmers but I’m a
believer you have to persevere like
Winston Churchill said when things are
going to hell there’s nothing to do but
move forward so I picked myself up out
of the fetal position in the corner of
my office and I went to the government
of Alberta and I said look we have a
problem if we’re gonna survive in the
new economy and own the innovation in
our industrial sectors and be more
competitive globally in those industrial
sectors than we need more talent so in
fairness to them within 60 days they
announced 50 million dollars for 3,000
tech spots in the education system
and they’ve also we’ve been working with
the post secondaries to roll out
customized and particularly the
University of Calgary to
to do programs where we can have our
engineers do two semesters and become a
good software engineer or a data
scientist and believe me we are out
recruiting too now we may not get Amazon
headquarters but we want companies that
will pull talent into this community and
in fact we’re a tech fest this week in
Toronto recruiting talent to come to
Calgary because in spite of what they
think a horse and a buggy in Waterloo is
not as exciting as the Rocky Mountain
playground now I don’t want to leave you
with the wrong impression
I’m from material by the way I can say
that I don’t want to leave you with the
wrong impression I have to tell you that
the innovation ecosystem has been
quietly strengthening here in Calgary in
our next economic wave and the height of
that economic wave will be determined on
how we embrace technology round out our
talent pool and strengthen our economic
ecosystem innovation ecosystem here in
Calgary and I’m quite proud of this
community because it was only 14 months
ago that I was sitting in a room have at
our economic summit and somebody and I
think it was the mayor which is
interesting all in itself said you’re
not moving fast enough and in 14 months
14 months the things that have happened
have been amazing in this town from this
building the nucleus to the platform to
the Edison to rocket space to
rainforests to creative destructive labs
to the entrepreneurial hub up at the
University to Calgary technologies inc
reinventing itself and focused on scale
up to Calgary economic development
buying the assets of start-up in
reinventing that program to the
university starting to focus more on
tech transfer with more favorable IP
protocol to the City of Calgary giving
Calgary Economic Development a hundred
million dollars to invest in catalytic
and transfer transformative projects
here in Calgary now I can see that money
but I can’t touch it
just for the record so I won’t be giving
it out but it’s interesting and
increasingly we’re seeing entrepreneurs
come together with corporate corporate
partners and the real success will come
although it’s not as mature is if we
build out that you know these innovation
ecosystem and make it as concentrated
and successful as we have the energy
ecosystem and you think about this
eight-block radius in downtown Calgary
this is infrastructure innovation
ecosystems are clamoring to create a
place where people collide and
collaborate a police place you can do
eight meetings in a day and you do deal
on a handshake in a Tim Horton’s line so
it is important that we overlay this
innovation ecosystem over top of our
industrial ecosystems we have to
recreate them and we have to layer them
on top I know that we can be successful
in this city when every corporation in
this city knows where to go to me to
start up that can solve their problem or
a scale-up company that can solve their
problem where companies that are in the
energy industry the transportation
industry aerospace industry and
agriculture are all working on common
technologies to solve the problems and
make their industries more efficient
where young people can be mentored and
learned from the seasoned people or in
the case of technology might be the
seasoned people learning from the young
but I am confident that Calgary can do
it and the reason that I’m confident
that Calgary can do it because we are
jurisdiction that persevere and embraces
ingenuity we are a place where the
indigenous people came in in spite of
the harsh conditions they thrived and
lived here for thousands of years we are
jurisdiction that managed and navigated
the toughest topography in the country
to put the CP rail through the Rocky
Mountains and we are a jurisdiction
where the energy industry cleverly
figured out how to go three kilometers
five kilometers across and hit a bathtub
size target and extract really difficult
product at a very difficult geology to
serve the world and more recently or
recently just five years ago next month
this is a city that rallied around each
other
and helped each other out to get the
city up and operating with a few it
within a few short days so people a
million people could descend upon here
for the Calgary Stampede this is a city
where nothing is impossible this is a
city come hell or high water that we
make sure that nothing is impossible now
this history of this jurisdiction has
always inspired me it has always
inspired me now I grew up with four
older brothers not these ones these ones
look nice it was such an could have been
a such a negative force for me it didn’t
matter if we were swimming or skiing or
skating or simply running up the stairs
of our house everything was a
competition and I had to embrace it and
fight like hell but I was brought up to
believe that you have to persevere and
that nothing is impossible
you can beat those boys even as mean as
they are like many of you I didn’t I
didn’t grow up here
in Calgary I came here and in fact I
came here crying don’t tell my boss that
by the way but it was a city that I felt
like I belonged and sure part of it is
because of the quality of life we have
here with this rocky mountain playground
and the fact that it is a safe community
and the fact that I could afford a home
on an airline salary that was funny by
and the fact that it was this is a place
of inclusiveness and it’s a meritocracy
and if you want to work hard you can do
well here but more importantly it was
because they were surrounded by people
who embraced and breathed and breathed
the concept and the idea that nothing is
impossible this is why I love my job
because I believe with being focused and
working together that we can accomplish
this
if Calgary was a stock I would recommend
you all buy it there is no reason why
Calgary cannot be the place of choice in
Canada where the world’s best
entrepreneurs will come here and they
will embrace innovation and they will
create solutions for us to deliver
products to the rest of the world and
really and we will deliver human is the
highest victory the greatest things that
humans need safe food between energy
easy transportation and good health
nothing is impossible in Calgary thank
you very much [Music]
Please follow and like us: