Calgary, October 18, 2021 – The Calgary Chamber of Commerce extends warm congratulations on behalf of the business community to mayor-elect Jyoti Gondek and all councillors-elect across the city’s 14 wards. We look forward to working closely with the newly elected City Council to build a vibrant, inclusive and prosperous future for Calgary.
The Chamber also thanks all mayoral and councillor candidates for their dedication to Calgary, and for bringing critical issues to the fore throughout the election campaign. It is diversity of thought and commitment to improving our communities that strengthens our democracy and public policy.
“This election has been critical to set the direction for the Calgary’s future – and with high voter turnout, we’ve seen Calgarians are invested in our city’s future,” says Deborah Yedlin, President and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. “The incoming City Council will face the challenging, yet critical task of bringing forward thoughtful public policy that embodies and empowers Calgary’s resilient, entrepreneurial and optimistic spirit.”
To position Calgary for tomorrow, we believe Council must urgently move forward with conviction on the following:
- Attracting, retaining and investing in talent. We envision a vibrant Calgary that develops, retains, and attracts talent from all walks of life, enabling our city and our people to have the skills needed to thrive in the economy of today and tomorrow. To ensure talented people from around the world and here at home choose to come to and stay in Calgary, we need to promote and develop growing companies, invest in our community’s vibrancy, build the best places to work by promoting mental health and well-being and foster strong post-secondary institutions.
- Rebalancing and stabilizing property taxes. Calgary should be a competitive and stable place to do business, supported by fair and equitable contributions from residents and businesses to support service delivery and community well-being. Calgary’s City Council can make this happen by introducing long-term, structural changes to Calgary’s property tax system that will bolster business resiliency during challenging economic periods, provide a higher level of certainty and stability for existing businesses and encourage new investment.
- Reimagining Calgary’s downtown. Our vision is that the heart of Calgary’s incredible community is a vibrant downtown – a place for all Calgarians to come together, and where we choose to live, work, and play. To foster this place-making, we need meaningful investment in social and capital infrastructure downtown, acceleration of the conversion of vacant offices to mixed-use space, thriving post-secondaries in the core and continued investment in a well-developed public transit and transportation network that connects downtown with all communities.
- Creating an inclusive Calgary. We envision a city and economy that is inclusive, safe and provides opportunity for everyone, particularly those economically or socially marginalized. To move toward this vision, Council and Administration must focus increase physical and social accessibility, invest in mental health supports, prioritize and accelerate permanent supportive and affordable housing and use a GBA+ framework to inform decision-making to enable greater participation, opportunity, and equity for all.
- Making it easier to do business in Calgary. We need to make it simple and straightforward to start, scale-up and grow a business in Calgary. We also need an ecosystem that facilitates business-to-business and business-to-consumer connections and collaborations. Both goals can be achieved by maintaining a creative and agile approach to policymaking and through even further collaboration and communication with the Calgary business community.
“Calgary is no stranger to challenges and economic uncertainty,” says Yedlin. “But we’ve seen time and again, that with bold leadership and thoughtful public policy, our city is capable of tackling complex challenges, developing innovative solutions and being the place where entrepreneurs, investors and talented individuals come to achieve their potential. We look forward to working with our new City Council to achieve what we know our business community and our city is capable of.”
About the Calgary Chamber
The Calgary Chamber is an independent non-profit, non-partisan business organization. For 130 years, the Chamber has worked to build a business community that nourishes, powers, and inspires the world.
For media inquiries, please contact Arianne Brady, Communications Manager, at media@calgarychamber.com or at 403-750-0414.
