Home : Media Centre : News Releases : 2006
For Release
May 9, 2006
Small Businesses Booming in Western Canada
Vancouver, British Columbia – The Honourable Carol Skelton, Minister of National Revenue and Minister of Western Economic Diversification today released Revisiting Portraits of Small Business Growth and Employment in Western Canada.
“Small business is the most dynamic sector of the Canadian economy. They create jobs and spur innovation,” said Minister Skelton. “Western Canada has a larger share of small businesses, with almost 50 per cent of all Western Canadian employment attributable to small business. This reflects our region’s strong economic growth and strong entrepreneurial spirit.”
“Small businesses create jobs and are the backbone of our country’s economy,” said Minister Chuck Strahl, Senior Regional Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board. “British Columbia has seen solid growth in small business numbers, with more than half of the province’s small businesses located in the Lower Mainland.”
The report was prepared by the University of Alberta’s Western Centre for Economic Research (WCER), with funding provided by Western Economic Diversification Canada.
“One of the most significant findings,” says Dr. Edward J. Chambers, WCER Research Professor and co-author of the Report, “is the much higher level of entrepreneurial activity in the West compared with the rest of Canada. New ventures measured on a per capita basis were 77 per cent more frequent in the West. We need to understand more about entrepreneurship in the region and its potential for contributing to the longer term diversified development of the West.”
The report examines the importance of small business to the economies and employment of Canada’s four western provinces, and is an update of an earlier report, released in 1999.
Report highlights include:
- Western Canada has a disproportionately large share of small businesses in Canada.
- The rate of growth of small businesses in Alberta outstripped that of the other western provinces, primarily because of the strong growth in the energy sector.
- Calgary and Edmonton rank first and second in Western Canada in the concentration of high-tech small businesses.
- In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the small business sector was affected by the agricultural crisis, which spilled over into the non-agricultural business sector.
The report is available free-of-charge at: www.bus.ualberta.ca/wcer
For additional information, contact:
| Sandra Souchotte
|
Dr. Edward J. Chambers |
WD Toll-Free Number:
1 888 338-WEST (9378) |