Productivity, competition keys to prosperity

Winnipeg Free Press

30-04-2025

Carlo Dade brought a piece of advice on his trip to Winnipeg: rethink the future.
Mega regions — or clusters of cities combining resources — are investment boons and a threat to Manitoba's economic prospects, he warned. Meantime, the rules-based global trade Canadians have come to expect is disrupted.
'It's not about surviving (U.S. President Donald) Trump, it's about surviving generational change in the U.S.,' Dade told the Free Press ahead of his lecture to Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce members.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Carlo Dade, director of public policy at the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy, speaks Tuesday at ECONx at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.
The chamber held its first economic summit Tuesday in partnership with the City of Winnipeg. The daylong event, called ECONx, was pushed back from November; organizers postponed once Trump was elected, hoping uncertainty would subside.
Lagging productivity, Winnipeg's economic future and the areas within private-sector control were explored during speeches and sessions.
'When I see Manitoba and Winnipeg abroad, and I see Calgary abroad, I see them talking about city-to-city comparisons,' said Dade, a senior fellow with the Canada West Foundation, an Alberta-based think tank.
'(But) the complexity and risk, the level of competition (for investment) has gone up.'
Winnipeg doesn't just compete with Minneapolis; it competes with Minneapolis-St. Paul, which draws US$878 million of venture capital annually, per the region's economic development partnership website. Calgary contends with an economic hub including Denver, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs in Colorado and Cheyenne, Wyo., Dade outlined.
He highlighted cross-border partnerships like Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, Ore.
Trade with the United States will continue to be uncertain post-Trump, Dade forecast: 'I don't see (Manitoba) having understood the severity, the duration and the intensity of the change that's coming to the U.S.'
In 2023, $37.4 billion worth of goods crossed the Manitoba-U.S. border, by Canadian Chamber of Commerce numbers.
Dade hoped his speech would be a 'come to Jesus moment' for the roughly 250 chamber members in the crowd. He didn't have solutions, Dade added; he wanted to spotlight the issues he foresaw.
Meanwhile, Manitoba's productivity scores below the national average, a University of Calgary report shows. The province's GDP has fallen behind mid-sized cities 'we should be outperforming,' said Kevin Selch, chamber board chair and founder of Little Brown Jug Brewing Co.
'It's not the absence of talent, ideas or funding. It's the absence of a unified, co-ordinated push forward,' Selch said in a speech Tuesday.
ECONx was created to be a platform for executives to learn 'tangible steps' they could take to advance economic growth, said Loren Remillard, president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.
'We're not looking, necessarily, for government to always lead the way and have the answers,' Remillard said. 'There's still uncertainty (in the economy), but there's certainty that chaos seems to be the one thing that you can bank on.'
Booking a Google Cloud manager as the morning keynote speaker was intentional. Artificial intelligence is under-utilized among Winnipeg's small- and medium-sized businesses, Remillard stated.
'This is how we're going to address the productivity issue,' he said of AI. 'That's how we're going to be able to really offset some of the challenges from the United States.'
Sam Sebastian, vice-president and Canada country manager for Google Cloud, appealed to Winnipeg's business crowd. One of the biggest hurdles to AI adoption is company culture and an unwillingness to change, he said.
Canada has led G7 countries in AI-related scholarly output per capita since 2019, a government of Canada report reads.
'We stand at the cusp of a transformation unlike what we've ever seen before,' Sebastian said. 'We need to embrace adoption to secure future competitiveness.'
Using AI as a work assistant, including for finding information and synthesizing data, will make employees more productive, Sebastian said.
Mayor Scott Gillingham attended Sebastian's talk. In his 2024 state of the city address, he challenged Winnipeg's chamber to lead a conversation about the capital's economic future; the speech sparked ECONx.
'We cannot afford, as a city, to coast,' Gillingham told the crowd Tuesday. 'We must innovate and we must be productive.'
His message comes amid a broad investment pause. Tariffs and U.S.-created uncertainty have led Manitoba businesses to put plans on ice.
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'There's an old saying: never waste a crisis. A crisis is also a time for an opportunity,' Gillingham told reporters Tuesday.
The City of Winnipeg must do its part to create a business-friendly environment, he added. KPMG is working on a review of the city's permitting and development process and an artificial intelligence 311 chatbot is in its testing phase. Gillingham didn't have timelines for either project's completion.
The future of work, equitable economic growth and sustainable growth were among the topics covered Tuesday.
ECONx might run again in two years, Remillard said. The chamber plans to assess event outcomes before launching another summit.
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Gabrielle PichéReporter
Gabrielle Piché reports on business for the Free Press. She interned at the Free Press and worked for its sister outlet, Canstar Community News, before entering the business beat in 2021. Read more about Gabrielle.
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