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.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1471305
JULY/AUGUST 2022 BCBUSINESS 55 ISTOCK T he boom times only look that way in hindsight. We may come to remember 2021 as the sweet spot between the initial shock COVID- 19 dealt to the world economy and the twin perils of inflation and rising interest rates that threaten recession in 2022. Both literally and figuratively, 2021 was a year for healing. The deployment of vac- cines dramatically defanged the pandem- ic's lethal bite, even as new coronavirus variants found ways around our defences. Meanwhile the British Columbia economy played catch-up on the ground lost in 2020, growing an estimated 5 percent and returning the province effectively to full employment. Credit where it's due: public policy had a lot to do with it. Government stimulus, initially focused on individuals, shifted to small business and hard-hit sectors with nary a word about austerity. Meanwhile, central banks kept overnight lending rates near all-time lows. Money could be had seemingly for free. In 2021 we began to notice the conse- quences, though, first with a spring spike in lumber prices as the long under-capi- talized forest industry struggled to meet house-bound consumers' sudden passion for home improvement. Then supply-chain issues popped up across the global economy as companies reconfigured their sources of inputs to ward off pandemic-related disrup- tions and geopolitical realignments of an increasingly bipolar world. Our annual snapshot of B.C.'s corporate heavyweights proves once again that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone b y M I C H A E L M C C U L L O U G H continued on page 60 Anything but Normal SHIP SHAPE It wasn't all smooth sailing for the province's biggest companies, but many are back on track