BCBusiness

January/February 2022 – The Most Resilient Cities

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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34 BCBUSINESS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 NIK WEST Just So You Know… • Our ranking only includes cities of 10,000 or more permanent residents. • We excluded bedroom communities such as Lake Country, Oak Bay and West Vancouver, which may offer a high quality of life but have relatively small job markets. • Langley and North Van- couver are represented on the ranking by both their city and district municipalities. • Although we use the term "city" throughout, our annual survey is technically a ranking of municipalities, as legally defined by the B.C. Local Government Act. • We work with research partner Environics Analyt- ics because we believe it has the best data available –but even the best data has its limitations. To produce municipal-level population growth numbers, for example, Environics Analytics used regional-level estimates from Statistics Canada to make 2021 projections. • Job numbers and unem- ployment rates come from StatCan's monthly Labour Force Survey and only present figures for B.C.'s eight economic regions and four census metropoli- tan areas for the first three quarters of 2021. Similarly, monthly housing starts figures provided by Canada Mortgage and Hous- ing Corp. and quarterly residential sales figures from BC Assessment only reflect the year-to-date fig- ures collected to the end of September. As such, those indicators won't account for economic trends over the final quarter of 2021. • Annual rental vacancy rates from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. only represent the "primary rental market," or private apartment unit market. However, the primary rental market rates for four cities on our list weren't reported because of unreliable or insuf- ficient data. So we derived estimates for Summerland from reported vacancy rates for both apartments and townhouses; for Sooke from regional figures reported for the Capital Region; for Whistler from values provided for the Whistler Housing Author- ity's stock of workforce rental housing; and for Sechelt from an analysis of its total rental stock, its advertised rental listings and the performance of its regional peers. • because you have all of these [opportuni- ties] here," Boateng says. Langford's pro-business attitude has been another factor, he reckons. "The City of Langford has been very, very supportive of young entrepreneurship in the last three to five years or so." Stuart agrees: "Langford is the place to do business—we have a very business-friendly mayor and council." Looking back over the past few years, he calls the City a key supporter of the local business community. "Dur- ing the pandemic, the City staff were very helpful," Stuart says. "Any time I had questions or concerns, they were there to assist as needed. I have a very high regard as to how the City han- dled the pandemic, and continues to do so." The city's restaurant industry was hit hard by the pandemic, but Stuart and Boateng both credit their determination to remain open and willingness to adapt their business models with carrying them through uncertain times. "The businesses who chose to pivot and stay open did very well," Stuart recalls. "We immediately adapted to a model of takeout and pickup orders. I also made Poncho's posters and distributed them to OUR HOUSE Castro Boateng's eponymous eatery is part of a dynamic restaurant scene in Langford, again ranked No. 1 BEST CITIES FOR WORK IN B.C.

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