Professor Shark posted:

It sucks that you're out of a job, but from listening to the director of Haven and a film exec on CBC the other night the film industry sounds pretty pathetic.

They basically said that the industry moves to wherever has the most subsidies.

This is of course at the expense of the taxpayer.

They tried their best to say that having the industry is good for the province, but even then their arguments were weak and basically "it's good in lots of ways, they're just hard to measure!", while in the same breath at times they were saying that without the province paying their workers for them they wouldn't survive.

At one point the Haven director said "And it brings in the... creators", which was pretty funny.

Our province has enough problems without having to worry about subsidizing another industry that cannot survive on it's own.

Professor Shark posted:

This is a great article, but do they not allow you to copy their text on their site?

Anyway, I wanted to quote the author when she says that after all the Albertans got fired a few slumps ago, they bootstrapped and opened their own businesses, and now 95% of businesses in Alberta are Small Business.

She isn't living in reality.

quote:

CALGARY, AB, Apr 1, 2015/ Troy Media/ – The year I settled in Calgary, it snowed in July. I thought I’d fallen into a cold version of hell. Adding to my misery, it was the early 90s and the oil and gas industry was in another big slump. Every week there was more bad news out of the oil patch. Downtown was aflutter with layoffs. For a new grad looking for work, it was a wholly unenthusiastic start.

Despite the not-so-positive first impression of my adopted home, I’m still here more than 20 years later. And now, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. As I look back on what helped me weather that early storm, and think about what makes me optimistic about the future, even with a once-again shaky economy, it comes down to three things.

Alberta has entrepreneurial spirit
First, I love Alberta’s plucky entrepreneurial spirit. All those layoffs from the 90s? Many of those newly-emancipated employees tore up their pink slips and started their own businesses. Rather than stay down on the mat, they got up, rallied their inner warriors, and kept swinging. Their gutsiness kind of surprised me. I was used to fear and whingeing in the face of a slump. But their confidence was inspiring. And with time it became contagious. Their can-do response made me realize the world didn’t have to crash in after all.


Alberta has nowhere to go but up
If anything, that attitude has only grown over the last two decades. In fact, entrepreneurship has flourished in Alberta, where small businesses make up 95 per cent of all business. As always, entrepreneurship promises to be the way forward. And the new possibilities for solving old problems are endless. As they have for decades, Albertans will once again find ways to create opportunity out of adversity.

I have a second reason for optimism. That’s because the quality of our people and our strong sense of community is like nowhere else. I love the people in this province. We’re serious about what we do, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re fiercely competitive in business, but when the chips are down, we pull together. I recall that during the 2013 floods, the reason so few businesses failed was precisely because the entire community pulled together to help each other out. Businesses that weren’t flooded shut down to help those that were. While other communities that experience natural disasters see up to 50y per cent of their businesses go under, less than 1 per cent of our businesses closed. That is a perfect picture of what makes our province so. Darn. Special.

Our community pride doesn’t just come out during natural disasters. And it doesn’t shine brightest on the first two weeks of July during Stampede. It’s shown every day by the creative social entrepreneurs who connect philanthropists, non-profits, and businesses to tackle social problems and create the kind of social infrastructure – arts, culture, recreation – that make Alberta communities strong. It’s our emotional connection to one another – strengthened by this solid social infrastructure – that will help to keep communities connected and stable even as the economic engine slows.

My third reason for optimism is slightly more elusive. It comes down to this: that, as a province, we have only begun to realize our potential. We are still young, with a relatively small population. Yet our people are among the most skilled and best-educated people anywhere. We are only now coming into a leadership role as political, economic, and intellectual leaders – both in Canada and in the world.

Over the past two decades, I’ve worked with some of the boldest and visionary leaders anywhere. It might surprise you to learn the one thing that most of them have in common. Despite their obvious talents, they tended to underestimate themselves and their organizations. We have no shortage of creativity and potential in this province. If we lack anything, it may be boldness. It’s boldness that has driven growth in our province. Of late, we’ve lost some of it. We need to get it back. And that boldness isn’t likely to come from government. It’s got to come from committed citizens, creative community leaders, and brave business people willing to take aim and lead the way.

Albertans are resilient
Face it, Alberta, we’ve got more than oil going for us. We have an incredible history of resilience and entrepreneurship. We have created sticky communities filled with people connected to each other and committed to our odd blend of independence mixed with inter-dependence. The only thing missing is the realization that we’re capable of so much more than we think.

Alberta has nowhere to go but up. And there’s still no place I’d rather be. Even if it does snow in July.

Joni Avram (causeeffect.ca) helps donors, businesses, and non-profit enterprises gain credibility, build influence, and grow support through effective marketing and engagement strategies. Her expertise has helped generate millions for philanthropic initiatives, focused on effective collaboration, blended value, and social outcomes. You can follow Joni on Twitter @joniavram

Cultural Imperial posted:

Cultural Imperial posted:

Terebus posted:

It annoyed me that they did that so I copied it as well but you beat me to it. Did you do it by disabling javascript and fiddling with css or did you just save the page as a txt file?

Ccs posted:

The only justification I've seen for subsidies that makes sense is that North America is losing animation, vfx, and post-production work to China, India, and South Korea because of lower labor costs. I kind of agree that subsidies could be good to offset that, but then the work coming out of those countries ends up being higher quality!

Strong Convections posted:

As someone who's worked with some of that outsourced work from China and India (but not SK to be fair) - bahahaha!

At the moment you spend as much time and money cleaning up and fixing the poo poo that comes out of the outsourced companies as you would if you'd just kept the work in "the west". They're desperate for good, competent staff- and anyone really good bails and gets a job in a better paid country. Unfortunately too, there's a lot of dodgy unlicensed software in China & India- Canada may cost a lot to operate in, but a lot of the costs mean that the industry itself is sustainable.

That's what a lot of this madness boils down to- shortsighted people at the top thinking about short-term gains. Yes, it's cheaper to outsource to countries with lovely IP laws, but when the software makers go under, you'll have destroyed decades of work and badly damage the industry you're trying to profit off. Yes, it's cheaper to keep a worker's wages low, but you'll destroy the ability of consumers to purchase your goods. Yes, it's cheaper to make money loaning bigger and bigger amounts to people to buy homes rather than loan to something productive like businesses, but... it'll all be fine, that's a great plan!

Slash subsidies, reintroduce tariffs.

Rime posted:

BaronJutter, I seriously love this town but WHY IS loving EVERYTHING FOR LEASE, HOLY poo poo, LIKE HALF THE BLOODY DOWNTOWN CORE.

There are storefronts here that have been for lease since I was last here 2.5 years ago, except now there's 3x as many new ones as well!

Your boardgame cafe is loving awesome though and I would move here just for that amenity alone.

Ccs posted:

Maybe the local workers back where they're from are much worse, because they don't feel the same pressure. I don't know.

Lexicon posted:

Relatedly, what's the goddamn deal with that hole in the ground beside Uptown?

Strong Convections posted:

BINGO! You're comparing the cream of the crop- those who are talented enough to get sponsored by foreign companies at no small expense- to the average worker. The average worker back in China and India just doesn't measure up, plus there's the language barrier. Successful (english language) productions tend to have a lot of the management, supervisory, and lead roles staffed by either foreigners or locals that have spent a lot of years working in foreign countries, and those people are not paid local level wages.

I would imagine the budget of a branded property like How to train your Dragon would be much higher than for any average Canadian CGI TV show. The prestige also means you're going to get better people willing to work on it. (EDIT: Looked into this, can't find anything indicating Dragons was made by Oriental DreamWorks- what's your source?)

I think you'd find the average Canadian worker has an awful lot of drive if you offered them a job paying stupid amounts of money to work in their dream foreign country. You'll find that with the subsidies moving around, so too are the best of Canada's vfx workers- the equivalents of those excellent Chinese and Indians you'll find are working where the money is. The answer isn't to turn Canada into a shithole so that people are more driven to work harder to get out.

Cultural Imperial posted:

hahahaha holy poo poo

Cultural Imperial posted:

I'd love to hear the Irish excuse for a housing bubble this time around. "It's different this time"

OhYeah posted:

This can't possibly be correct?

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Many+Albertans+think+global+warming+hoax+UFOs+real+poll/10935648/story.html posted:

One in five Albertans believe Bigfoot is real, and even more think global warming is a hoax.

A new Insights West poll also reveals more than one in three Albertans think the 1997 death of Princess Diana in a car crash was actually an assassination, and 40 per cent of residents think scientists have found a cure for cancer but the government or pharmaceutical companies are withholding it.

Guest2553 posted:

The Texas of Canada indeed

Cultural Imperial posted:

I'm definitely not arguing the irish aren't dumb as poo poo.

Seat Safety Switch posted:

Try that poll on Vancouver Island and let me know how it goes for you.

Rime posted:

BaronJutter, I seriously love this town but WHY IS loving EVERYTHING FOR LEASE, HOLY poo poo, LIKE HALF THE BLOODY DOWNTOWN CORE.

There are storefronts here that have been for lease since I was last here 2.5 years ago, except now there's 3x as many new ones as well!

Your boardgame cafe is loving awesome though and I would move here just for that amenity alone.

Amos Moses posted:

To be fair those "Albertans" are most likely from Ontario/East Coast.

Professor Shark posted:

It sucks that you're out of a job, but from listening to the director of Haven and a film exec on CBC the other night the film industry sounds pretty pathetic.

They basically said that the industry moves to wherever has the most subsidies.

This is of course at the expense of the taxpayer.

They tried their best to say that having the industry is good for the province, but even then their arguments were weak and basically "it's good in lots of ways, they're just hard to measure!", while in the same breath at times they were saying that without the province paying their workers for them they wouldn't survive.

At one point the Haven director said "And it brings in the... creators", which was pretty funny.

Our province has enough problems without having to worry about subsidizing another industry that cannot survive on it's own.

Big K of Justice posted:

And any place that actually shoots footage in Vancouver, has set dressing or is comped to change Vancouver to make it look like another location.

Guest2553 posted:

They did the poll in BC too.

12% of them think global warming is a hoax, 27% that Princess Di was an inside job, 20% in bigfoot, 32% in human cloning and 32% that cancer has already been cured. So really it's idiots all the way down?

Baronjutter posted:

A lot of "cabin country" and "get away" locations actually forbid renting or any sort of short-stay arrangements. For example on Pender island there is a massive glut of houses for sale and people underwater on their mortgage after their "cabin" value went down by half but you absolutely can not rent your cabin out. That would bring riff raff to the island! You can't trust someone who doesn't own, who doesn't have a ham in the local community! *kills local economy with strict holiday rental laws*

But that's a sales feature for a lot of these places. Don't worry there won't be any tourists, only fellow wealthy vacation home owners like you.

Big K of Justice posted:

Tourism?

Femtosecond posted:

I'm pretty curious what is going to happen to the Gulf Islands in the mid to long term. I rarely go there, and so I might be pretty off base without more detailed, local knowledge of the situation, but it seems like there are a number of factors that could contribute to a dramatic collapse in housing value in the future.

* Expensive housing
* "Island Lifestyle" is a locals thing. Foreign money is going to Vancouver real estate, not the islands.
* BC Liberals underfunding and meddling with BC Ferries is destroying island communities.[1]
* Weak island communities make buying island property less appealing.
* Low ability for local millenials to buy boomers' expensive houses anyway.

[1] I was on Gabriola over xmas. Plenty of empty storefronts and "selling business" signs. It didn't look like a healthy community at all.

Lexicon posted:

I don't understand why there's not widespread outrage over this subsidy nonsense.

etalian posted:

Not anymore since they got laid off and had to flee back to their home province.

Big K of Justice posted:

And any place that actually shoots footage in Vancouver, has set dressing or is comped to change Vancouver to make it look like another location. Because if there is one thing that Vancouver is good at , is looking generic.