At Calgary’s Centre for Newcomers, where Kelly Ernst is chief program officer, staff have been — in Ernst’s words — “run off their feet.”
The non-profit organization, which offers services and language training to immigrants and refugees in Alberta’s largest city, served an eye-popping 50,000 clients last year. It was a dramatic increase from the prior year, and also a huge uptick from pre-pandemic times.
“These numbers are more than 100 per cent greater than the previous year, and triple five years ago,” Ernst said.
“For some services, the numbers are up over 400 per cent over two years.”
The surge in demand for newcomer services in Calgary is a reflection of Alberta’s record-breaking population growth, which has come with both pros and cons.
In 2023, the western province saw its population surge by 202,324 residents to 4.8 million, according to Statistics Canada.
That’s the largest annual increase in Alberta’s history, the equivalent of 550 people moving to the province every day. While the bulk of the growth came from international migration, reflecting a Canada-wide trend, Alberta also shattered a national record in 2023 for interprovincial migration with a net gain of 55,107 people, the highest ever recorded by any province.
Most of these interprovincial migrants came from Ontario and British Columbia. Statistics Canada estimates that 38,236 Ontarians moved to Alberta last year, for example, versus just 14,860 Albertans who moved to Ontario.
Alberta has always been a place with periods of sudden, dramatic population growth. The province’s oil and gas-based economy has attracted waves of job-seekers during historical times of high commodity prices and busy oil patch activity.
But what is happening right now in Alberta is different than in the past, said Mark Parsons, chief economist for ATB Financial.
“Alberta’s is a relatively strong economy, so the fast rate of job growth is contributing to the influx of people coming into the province, no question,” Parsons said.
“What’s different this time is that affordability is playing an important role — particularly housing affordability.”
Experts say Canada’s housing crisis, and the affordability of the Alberta real estate market compared with places like Toronto and Vancouver, is one of the reasons the province has been the destination for so many U-Hauls and moving trucks.
In fact, housing affordability was one of the carrots the Alberta government dangled with its “Alberta is Calling” ad campaign, which ran in the spring of 2023 in southern Ontario and Atlantic Canada. The campaign urged Canadians who can’t afford a home where they live to consider moving to Alberta, with its comparatively high salaries and lower real estate prices.
While the campaign was a smashing success from a marketing perspective, Alberta’s population boom has downsides. The sharp uptick in residents has helped drive economic growth, supporting retail and restaurant sales in the province and leading to a flurry of construction activity, but it has also made Alberta’s famously affordable real estate less affordable.
“In 2022, it felt like everyone was saying, ‘Alberta’s on sale, this is great, this is amazing,'” said Calgary real estate agent Dawn Herron Maser.
“But now people who are from here are starting to feel like, ‘Is it really that much on sale anymore? Because we’re here in Alberta and we’re struggling. We’re struggling to buy our homes here.'”
BIDDING WARS IN CALGARY
In Calgary, the benchmark home price in March was $597,600, nearly 11 per cent higher than the previous year, according to the Calgary Real Estate Board. Anecdotes abound of wild bidding wars between buyers willing to waive all conditions and offer tens of thousands more than the asking price, a phenomenon that has become prevalent in hot markets like Toronto and Vancouver.
Calgary and Edmonton also saw the sharpest acceleration in rent prices among major Canadian cities in 2023. In Calgary specifically, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in 2023 jumped 14.3 per cent, the highest year-over-year growth in the country and the sharpest single-year rise in rent growth the city has seen since 2007, data from CMHC shows.
Adam Legge, president of the Business Council of Alberta, said new homes are simply not being built fast enough to keep up with the province’s growth. And there are other signs of strain showing as well. New arrivals to Alberta are struggling to find family doctors, and unprecedented school enrolment growth has led to overcrowded classrooms.
There is also a shortage of construction workers, welders and all of the other skilled tradespeople needed to build everything from houses to schools to roads as quickly as possible.
“We just aren’t seeing a sufficient inflow of new Albertans, either interprovincially or internationally coming with those kinds of skills and credentials,” Legge said.
While the pace of population growth in Alberta is expected to moderate this year and in 2025, ATB Financial predicts it will still be strong compared to most other parts of Canada and developed economies around the world.
In the long term, sustained growth is likely. The province’s economy is diversifying, creating opportunities for workers in non-oil and gas-related fields such as technology and aviation, and the proximity of the Rocky Mountains and some of Canada’s best-loved national parks continue to be a draw for tourists.
The Alberta government’s own projections call for the province’s population to hit six million people as early as 2039.
“We really need to start looking at Alberta, and the West in general, in a different way,” said Ernst, with the Centre for Newcomers, adding both provincial and federal governments need to prepare for the growth that is coming by investing in housing, infrastructure, programs and education.
“We’ve got to really think critically about the allocation of resources in this country — really understanding where people are moving, where people are setting up, where some of the population pressures are.”
Legge agreed, adding it’s vital Alberta prepare for its future by addressing areas that are already under strain due to the province’s rapid growth.
“The message ‘Alberta is Calling’ is clearly working, which is a great thing in the sense of growth for the province and the people who are bringing their skills and talents and passions and entrepreneurship here,” he said.
“We’ve just got to make sure that we don’t become victims of our own success, and tackle some of the challenges that are already putting strain on our quality of life.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 14, 2024.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
