EDITOR,
I believe Jim Harvey overestimates the importance of economic development strategy documents recently produced for the District ("Key industries being missed," Chief, June 17).
Their flaws are too obvious.
The report Economic Development Recommendations identifies "Outdoor recreation capital of Canada" as "The Squamish brand and [its only] competitive advantage," providing "the context for all other recommendations in this report."
The significance of this "brand" is quite simply overstated here. Squamish has important location, infrastructure, natural and human resource advantages not directly related to outdoor recreation.
Jim Harvey has difficulty seeing how, in the same report, port/marine and manufacturing can be derived from Outdoor Recreation Capital as "target sectors." I agree. But it was a clumsy exercise starting from this one "brand" in the first place.
The companion report, Outline for Economic Development Activities: 2011-15 is too much a "cookie-cutter" approach. Its work-plan scheme won't be relevant for all Squamish business sectors - even for those prioritized in the recommended strategy.
We can expect too much from out-of-town consultants. We can also be naïve in assuming their work is not biased, or conditioned by big-city perspectives.
As for Jim Harvey's two "key missing industries," we might keep in mind that knowledge-based and high-tech are service industries. They provide essential services to other sectors - like port/marine and manufacturing.
As illustration: Within our local port, natural resource, and manufacturing industries, we find award-winning software innovation (Squamish Terminals Ltd.), highly skilled consulting firms (some working internationally), and significant R&D program investment (e.g. Fraserwood Industries Ltd.).
In each of these three sectors there has recently been outside investor interest we are simply not prepared for, unfortunately.
We don't need more "us vs. them" in community debate. We need an ongoing, inclusive, constructive dialogue to produce an unbiased, multi-faceted economic development strategy for Squamish.
We need to understand our comparative advantages - our "fundamentals" - and fix them for all of our "target sectors."
Eric Andersen
Squamish
