A very good evening aspirants, I have an announcement for you, see checking your progress and assessing it is as important as studying regularly for the UPSA civil services examination. And well, again Shankaray's academy is going to lend you a hand in this. Yes, Shankaray's academy is going to help you in assessing your problems preparation for 2022 preliminary examination. And for this Shankaray's academy is conducting all India's problems mock test. It is a free mock test. It will be conducted in offline as well as online mode across 13 centres. And note down the dates here, it will be conducted on 15, 22nd and 29th of May. So I request the viewers to register for the free all India problems mock test for assessing your preparation. With this crucial information, let us get on to the Hindi news analysis dated 11th of May 2022. I have taken these news articles for discussion today and we also have a previous year question discussion session. At the end, I also have a quiz question for you. So now let's move on to the first session of the day, which is the previous year question discussion. So in the previous year question session, we are taking up questions from problems 2019. And today I have taken this question which is based on pollution from agriculture and allied activities. As you can see here, the question talks about nitrogen oxides, ammonia and reactive nitrogen released into the environment. Therefore, to answer this question, we have to have a basic understanding about nitrogen first. Let us see that now. See nitrogen is an essential fundamental building block for life. It is the most plentiful element in the earth's atmosphere. And yet in its molecular form, that is as N2, nitrogen is unusable by the vast majority of living organisms. Therefore, for nitrogen to be used by organisms, it must be transformed or fixed into other forms. These other forms are together called as reactive nitrogen. Therefore, the term reactive nitrogen includes oxides of nitrogen, anions and the amine derivatives. Here oxides of nitrogen includes the nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and nitrous oxide. And the anions include nitrate and nitrite. And then amine derivatives include ammonia and then ammonium salts and urea. So remember, all these are called as reactive nitrogen. Another important feature that is to be noted is that nitrogen is an essential nutrient element required by plants in greatest amount. It is absorbed by plants mainly as nitrate, that is as NO3. Some are also absorbed as nitrogen dioxide or ammonium, that is NH4 plus. So now let us come to the reactive nitrogen mentioned in the question. Let us take up the ammonia one first. It is denoted as NH3. See, ammonia is an air pollutant. It is known to have damaging impact on biodiversity, including sensitive habitats and ecosystem resilience. It also impacts human health. But our focus is on the sources. So let us see the sources of ammonia. So naturally, ammonia is generated by microorganisms when they decompose organic matter. So we can say that agriculture is the major source of ammonia. Now this ammonia is produced by many common farming activities. And this includes housing of livestock, the storing and spreading of manure and slurries, and even the application of fertilizer contributes to the production of ammonia. So actually how livestock or cattle is involved here. Here ammonia is generated because of nitrogen in the feces and the urine of pigs and cattle. It is also generated because of the uric acid of whole tree manure. So this was about ammonia. Next, let us take up the nitrogen oxides. As I already said, it includes NO, NO2 and N2O. Now in nature, lightning and ultraviolet radiation provide enough energy to convert nitrogen to these nitrogen oxides. For example, you would have noticed the irritant red haze in the traffic and congested places, right? This is due to the presence of oxides of nitrogen. And these oxides have several negative impacts. For example, higher concentrations of NO2 damages the leaves of plants and it also retards the rate of photosynthesis in plants. The nitrogen dioxide that is NO2 is also a lung irritant. Therefore it affects human beings and it leads to acute respiratory disease in children. And this NO2 is toxic to living tissues also. And it is also harmful to various textile fibers and metals. But what about the sources of these nitrogen oxides? Generally, they are released from industrial combustions, forest fires, automobile exhausts and they are released from power generating stations. And particularly if you take nitrous oxide, that is N2O, it is emitted during storage and treatment of the animal waste. So we can say that nitrogen oxides are released by animals. So with this basic understanding, let us take up the question now. First statement, agricultural soils release nitrogen oxides into environment. Yes, it is correct because agricultural soils are sometimes treated with manure, which is created by animal waste. And just now we saw that nitrous oxide is emitted during storage and treatment of animal waste. Second statement, cattle release ammonia into environment. This statement is also correct. We saw it. Now the third statement, poultry industry releases reactive nitrogen compounds into environment. This statement is also correct. So basically here the nitrogen oxides and ammonia mentioned in statement 1 and 2, both are reactive nitrogen only, right? Therefore we can say that reactive nitrogen is also released by poultry. As we saw, particularly ammonia is generated by the uric acid of poultry manure. So that means the moment you know that nitrogen oxides and ammonia, both are reactive nitrogen, you can easily answer this question. And all these three statements are correct. And that is why the correct answer to this question is option D, 1, 2 and 3. So I hope you had an understanding about the pollution from agriculture and allied activities. So this question, now let us move on to the next session of article discussion session. Let us take up the first news article. So now let us take up this article here. It says that the center has shifted its stand on who can grant minority status to communities. See earlier, the Ministry of Minority Affairs told the Supreme Court that both the center and the states have concurrent powers to notify minorities. But after that, the center changed its stance by saying that central government alone is vested with the power to notify a minority community. And now again, the Ministry has said that center has to have a wide consultation with the state governments and other stakeholders before notifying a community as a minority community. So due to this, now the Supreme Court has demanded a clarification on this issue. That is who can notify a community as minority. Therefore taking this opportunity, let us just understand what is meant by the term minority and who can notify a community as minority as per the existing laws. Let us start with the term minority. See, this term is mentioned in the Constitution. It has been mentioned in the Constitution only on two occasions, once in the article 29 and again in article 30. But remember, in Constitution, the term minority is nowhere defined. Therefore, Constitution mentions the term minority but does not define it. And also we know that the Constitution grants protection to religious and linguistic minorities. Other than this, that is other than the Constitution, you have to remember that an act is responsible for notifying minorities in our country. It is the National Commission for Minority Act of 1992. So this 1992 act also does not define the term minorities. So we can safely say that Constitution does not define minority and the 1992 National Commission for Minority Act also does not define the term minority. Then what this term actually means? See, if you take the general definition, it refers to a small group of people within a community or a country. Such a group differs from the main population in terms of race, religion, language or political persuasion. This is the general meaning of the term minority. Apart from this, United Nations has the definition. According to it, any group or community which is socially, politically and economically non-dominant and which is inferior in population are called as minorities. So we have a UN definition but there is no a well-defined one in India. Therefore, it was left at the discretion of the central government to determine what constitutes minorities. And based on this, six religious communities were already notified as minorities. And this was done under section 2 clause C of the 1992 act which says that the central government will notify who are minorities. According to it, initially five religious communities were notified as minority communities. This includes Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, that is Parsis. And then later in the year 2014, genes were also added to this list of minorities. And this was based on the population percentage of these religious communities in our country. See, as per census 2011, minorities in our country, they are about 19.3% of the total population. And among them, Muslims are 14.2% then Christians are about 2.3% of the total population and Sikhs constitute about 1.7%, Buddhists 0.7% and then Jains 0.4%. And among all these, the lesser population is of the Parsis which is just about 0.006% of the total population of our country. Now, let us come to the main question of who can determine a community as minority. As we already saw, the 1992 National Commission for Minorities Act provides a way in this. According to this act, central government decides who gets the minority community status in India. So, as I just said, 6 communities, that is religious communities, have been notified already. So, only those belonging to the communities notified under Section 2 Clause C of this 1992 law are regarded as minority citizens in our country. Now, if there is a clear-cut law, then why there is a confusion? See, earlier, the central government told the Supreme Court that the state governments could decide the minority status of the eligible communities within their territorial jurisdiction. And this came as a response to a public interest litigation, according to which majority communities in certain states are regarded as minorities. For example, as per the litigation, this is happening in Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Anarchal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Lakshodip and Punjab. The petition argues that Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists are majority people in these states, but they have been given the minority status depending on their national minority status. So, the petitioner argued that the followers of Hinduism, Judaism and Bahaism are a demographic minority in these states and yet they are denied the benefits given by the central government for minorities because at the national level, they are not considered as minorities. And on this petition only, now the Supreme Court is deciding. But now you may have a question of whether states have any hand in deciding minorities. Actually, states generally do not have their separate lists of minority communities, but there are exceptions. For example, Maharashtra has notified Jews as a minority community in this state. That means only on special instances, minority community were notified by the concerned state itself, but generally states do not notify minorities. Then why now the center is saying that individual states might consider granting Hindus the minority status within their territorial jurisdiction if the community is not in a majority. It is because minority is a subject under the concurrent list. We know that when a subject is under concurrent list, then both the center as well as the state governments can make laws on that subject. Therefore, there is an opinion that states can have a separate list of minority communities and Maharashtra has already used this opportunity. So, let us wait and see what stand is taken by the central government and what is the final decision made by the Supreme Court. We will also get to know whether Hindus get a minority status in the states of Germany, Kashmir, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, etc. So, these are the few points that you have to know about minorities. Now, let us get to the next discussion. Now, let us take up this news article. It says that states borrowing limits for the year 2023 is said to be cut in tune with their off-budget borrowings since 2020-21. See, the states are expected to borrow 8.4 lakh crore rupees during financial year 2023 and they have a borrowing limit of 3.5 percentage of GSTP that is gross state domestic product. Also, including the off-budget borrowings raised by state entities in states own budget would raise transparency. These are the points mentioned in the news article. So, today we are going to understand what do you mean by off-budget borrowing. See, one of the most important part in any union budget is the level of fiscal deficit. What is fiscal deficit? It is the gap between what the central government spends and what it earns. So, it also includes the level of borrowings by the union government. Now, this number of fiscal deficit is the most important metric to understand the financial health of any government's finances. So, why is it important? Because fiscal deficit is keenly watched by rating agencies, both the agencies inside as well as outside the country and that is why most governments want to restrict the fiscal deficit to a respectable number. Now, one of the ways to do this is by resorting to off-budget borrowings. Such borrowings are a way for the central government to finance its expenditure while keeping the debt of the annual statement so that it is not counted in the calculation of fiscal deficit. That means off-budget financing or off-budget borrowing is an extra budget borrowing and these are the loans that are taken not by the center directly but by any other public institution and such an institution borrows on the directions of the central government and these borrowings are used to fulfill government's expenditure needs. So, the point to be noted here is this liability of borrowing or the loan is not formally on the center rather it is on that public institution. So, this loan is not included in the national fiscal deficit. So, this helps to keep the country's fiscal deficit within acceptable limits. So, as a result this route of financing puts major sources of funds outside the control of parliament and that is why many governments across the world use this to escape budget controls including our Indian government. Now, let us see how these off-budget borrowings are raised or finances are raised. See, the government expenditure here is financed through market borrowings on behalf of the government by the government owned or government controlled public sector enterprises. That is the government can ask any implementing agency to raise the required funds from the market through loans or by issuing bonds. For example, food subsidy is one of the major expenditures of the center and if you see in the budget presentation for 2021 government paid only half the amount of budgeted food subsidy bill to the food corporation of India. So, what about the other half? That other half will be the shortfall right? This shortfall was met through a loan from the National Small Savings Fund. So, this loan is the off-budget borrowing. So, similarly other public sector undertakings have also borrowed for the government. For example, public sector oil companies like Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum, they were asked to pay for the subsidized gas cylinders for the Pradhan Mantri Ujwala Yojana beneficiaries in the past. Similarly, public sector banks have also been used to fund off-budget expenses. For example, loans from public sector undertaking banks were used to make up for the shortfall in the release of fertilizer subsidy. And if you take main entities like NABAR that is National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, it has borrowed for both rural development and irrigation projects. So, like this many entities have borrowed on behalf of the government and these are called as the extra-budget borrowings or off-budget borrowings or finances. And its main aim is to meet the fiscal deficit target. So, these are the few points that you have to know about off-budget finances. Let us move on to the next discussion. So, now let us take up this editorial article for discussion. It majorly talks about inflation. See, this editorial has been written in the backdrop of recent action of Reserve Bank of India. As you know, RBI recently raised the repo rate and cash reserve ratio. Repo rate was raised by 40 basis points and cash reserve ratio was raised by 50 basis points. We discussed all these on our 5th May Hindi News Analysis. So, those who want to know about the meaning of repo rate, cash reserve ratio, etc., they can view that analysis. Now, this measure was taken to tackle inflation. Now, the fact to be noted is inflation is not exclusive to India. Particularly after the pandemic, almost all countries have been affected by inflation. This situation is worst in the United States because their consumer price inflation has stood at 8.56% in March 2022. This is way higher than what India has. So, in the editorial, author analyzes some of the reasons for inflation in India and around the world. In the process, he explains the role of Keynesian theory of economics and also examines what type of inflation India is actually facing. So, today we will see certain inflation-related data, particularly for India, then the Keynesian theory of economics and the reasons for inflation. Before that, the syllabus relevant to this discussion is highlighted here. See, as you know, inflation is the rise and general level of prices of goods and services. So, that means when there is inflation, prices of most of the goods have gone up. Now, if you look at the data, as of October 2020, that is one and a half years before, inflation hit a peak of 7.61% and it remained at a high level of over 6% since April 2020 at that time. It only came down after December 2020. But the problem is, again in 2022, particularly after January, inflation has started rising significantly. Here, you can see the data for March 2022. According to it, the consumer price index inflation, that is, CPI inflation in India is at 6.95% and it is expected to rise further for April because India's CPI inflation has been fluctuating around the high level in the recent times and the same trend happened in 2020 also. In addition to the CPI inflation data, CFPI is also given here. CFPI is the Consumer Food Price Index. It has spiked to 7.68% in March. So, we can witness that this inflation is way above the target set by the government. Say, central government along with RBI has a monetary policy which mandates to maintain an annual CPI and this is called as inflation targeting. Here, the CPI is to be maintained at 4% and this has a tolerance limit of plus or minus 2%. That is, CPI could be between 2% to 6%. And as we can see for March 2022, it is way above 6%. So, it is above the targeted range and this is the reason why RBI raised the repo rate to tackle inflation. But according to the author, policymakers cannot ignore the behavior of other price indices also. Why? Because during the 2008-2009 crisis, central banks of developed countries, particularly the Fed of USA, that is the central bank of USA, was blamed for overlooking the sharp price and asset prices even though their CPI inflation was modest. So, author is suggesting that along with CPI inflation, other price indices and their behaviors should be taken into account. And particularly after the advent of COVID-19, the major concern of policymakers of the world was to revive demand. So, they try to achieve reviving demand by raising government expenditure. So, what they try to do was, they try to increase demand by raising government expenditure. This is something familiar that we have already learned in our school days. Yes, it is the standard Keynesian prescription or Keynesian economics. See, Keynesian economics is a macroeconomic theory. It is about the total spending in the economy and its effect on output, employment and inflation. This Keynesian economics was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes during the 1930s. He developed this in an attempt to understand the great depression. Particularly, this Keynesian economics is considered a demand-side theory that focuses on changes in the economy over the short run. So, based on this theory, Keynes advocated for increased government expenditures and lower taxes to stimulate demand and also to pull the global economy out of depression. So, what was this Keynesian economics? Actually, it refers to the concept that optimal economic performance could be achieved and economic slums can be prevented by influencing aggregate demand. So, here they are focusing on aggregate demand. And this could be done through activist stabilization and economic intervention policies by the government. That is Keynesian economics focuses on using active government policy to manage aggregate demand in order to address or to prevent economic recessions. So, the same was applied by many countries. So, what about India here? India, we know that the severe lockdowns prevented the spread of COVID-19, but it also restricted the mobility of people, goods and services. So, because of this, even though there was an expansion in government expenditure, it did not result in increased production. So, because of this, some say that Keynesian concept failed in India, but author differs in this opinion. According to author, it did not fail because Keynesian concept of enhanced government expenditure is still valid under the present circumstances. Author is stating this based on the fact that the increase in output could be happening, but with a lag. And with the relaxation of restrictions, it could gain momentum. So, according to author, right now, it is not advisable to say entirely that Keynesian economics failed in India. Therefore, we have to just wait for some time to fully analyze the effect of government policy that was aimed at managing demand. But now there is a question of what was the reason behind this inflation? Majorly, we could witness increases in prices of individual commodities such as crude oil, and this has been cited as a major reason for higher CPI inflation. Along with this, Russia-Ukraine war is also cited as another cause. We can say it is true to some extent. Now based on these two reasons, some even say that the current situation will be eased in the future when the Russia-Ukraine war comes to an end and when the government absorbs the increase in crude prices. Along with this, government can also attempt to reduce the duties on petroleum products for the simple reason that one segment of the population should not be an excessive burden. And the same consideration could be applied to food prices also. But even though if government takes these measures, it should not be considered as a magic wand that inflation will go away immediately. So, according to the author, the decision taken by the RBI to increase repo rate and CRR is a concomitant decision and not a setback. See, concomitant means a phenomenon that naturally accompanies or follows something. That means increasing the repo rate is normally done by the government to control inflation. So, on those slides, now also government is following the same route. It has helped India before, so it may help India now also. Now finally, author answers a question of whether India is facing cost push inflation. See, we say an inflation is cost push when the cost of supply rises or the level of supply falls. Either of these makes the prices rise in the final good and services even when demand remains the same. So, author is of the opinion that inflation in India cannot be described just as cost push because the abundance of liquidity is an important factor in the case of inflation in India. See, high liquidity in the market coupled with low supply will obviously raise inflation, right? See, assume you have so much money in your hand. At that same time, the product which you want to buy is limited in a particular store. If that product costs 500 rupees and you have some 20,000 rupees in your hand, you will be willing to pay more for that product just to obtain it. So, in this way, the price of that particular product increases and that is why we say high liquidity in the market along with low supply leads to inflation. So, the final suggestion of author is efforts should be taken to curtail liquidity along with tackling inflation because until and unless liquidity is curtailed, inflation will not come down and as a measure of this only, RB has raised its CRR because CRR will help in absorbing the liquidity in the market. So, the conclusion is generally low or moderate level of inflation is considered good for any economy because it helps in combating the effects of deflation and it also boasts economic growth. But beyond the point, inflation itself can hinder growth. Therefore, as author suggested, if India really wants to control inflation, action must be taken on curtailing liquidity as an immediate measure. So, these are few points that you have to note about inflation. Here, author discussed the level of inflation in India. He discussed whether the government's approach of Keynesian economics has failed or not and finally, we also saw the reasons for inflation in India and what can be done to overcome it. With these points in mind, let us get to the next discussion. Now, let us take up this last article for discussion. It says that information in broadcasting ministry has notified several sporting events as sporting events of national importance and this has been notified under these sports broadcasting signals mandatory sharing with Prasar Bharati Act and this notification supersedes the earlier issue notification in March 2021. So, today we are going to see what are these sporting events of national importance. First, know that the act that are these sports broadcasting signals mandatory sharing with Prasar Bharati, this act came into existence in 2007 and it is drafted to provide access to the largest number of listeners and viewers on a free-to-air basis and their access is given to the sporting events of national importance. See here, free-to-air basis means the television and radio services broadcast the free-to-air services in unencrypted form. So, it allows any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and the viewer listen to the content. It does not require any subscription. So, now, what about the sporting events of national importance? According to the act, this means national or international sporting events which are held in India or abroad and those ones which are notified by the central government in the official guest set as national important ones. So, so far central government has notified several sporting events as of national importance. Let us see the list now. Majorly know that it includes four sets of sporting events. First one is all Olympic games, second is Commonwealth games, third is Asian games and fourth is events relating to certain particular sports. Now, under this, there are many sport events included. First, cricket is included. Here you can see that under cricket, you can see semi-finals of many of the matches, you can see all official one-day matches etc. And then tennis is also included. Here you can see the Grand Slam tournaments also and then under hockey, you can see the World Cups, Champions Trophy etc. And in football, you can watch the World Cup, Asian Cup etc. And in badminton, we can see the open badminton championship. Then cup buddy is also a part of this, particularly World Cups where the matches features India is also declared as a sporting event of national importance. This includes both semi-finals and finals. And then the Kalo India games are also a part of this. And finally, apart from all these, certain other events are also declared as sporting events of national importance. It includes International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup event, then Commonwealth Shooting Championship, Commonwealth Archery Championship. These are declared as sporting events of national importance. But note that only when India is the host country, this will act as the sporting events of national importance. So, this article is just an informative article. Just go through this list. Have an idea that these are the sporting events declared as being nationally important. So, these points in mind. Now, let us get to the last session of the day, which is the practice questions discussion session. Now, let us take up this first question. Consider the following statements about minorities in India. First statement, the parameters to identify minorities in India are given by the Constitution of India. This statement is incorrect because the Constitution only mentions the term minority, but it does not define any parameter for that. And even the National Commission for Minority Act of 1992 does not define or mention any parameters for the same. So, first statement is incorrect. Now, the second statement, identification of minorities is a state subject. This is incorrect because clearly, during discussion, we saw that it is a subject under the concurrent list, which is the third list in the seventh schedule to the Constitution. So, this statement is also incorrect. And here, the question asks for the incorrect statements. The correct answer is option C, both one and two. Now, let us take up this next question. Which of the following statements is correct with reference to the off-budget borrowings? Statement A, borrowings of central government that are not included in the budget document. Next statement, borrowings of the state government that are not included in the state budget document. Option C, borrowings of public sector entities to fulfill the government's expenditure needs. Option D, both A and B. And from our discussion, we can easily say that the correct answer is option C, borrowings of public sector entities to fulfill the government's expenditure needs. Now, let us take up the quiz question for the day. It is a two statement question. Read the question carefully, and you can write the answer in the comment section. I will tell you whether your answer is right or not. And now, this is the main question for the day. It is based on the inflation editorial discussion. You can practice the answer writing using this question. So, with this, we have come to the end of in the news analysis for the date 11th of May 2022. I hope we could learn few important facts relevant to the examination in today's analysis. 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Broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen-only mode. Welcome back everyone or to our first-time participants. Welcome to the economic development webinar series. My name is Ben Kennedy. I'm with the Regional Programs and Engagement Branch of the Ministry of Jobs Traded Technology and I'll be facilitating today's webinar. I'm located in Victoria, BC on the unceded Coast Salish Territory of the Lekwungen people known today as the Esquimal and Songhees First Nations. Today's webinar is on community economic development and how the principles it follows can help your communities build resiliency to the ups and downs of economic change. But first just some housekeeping. On your attendee control panel you'll see the orange arrow lets you shrink the panel to the side of the screen. It automatically shrinks if you don't do anything for a while. Below that the orange microphone shows that you're muted. That is fixed to mute for this webinar. While the blue box lets you expand the whole webinar interface to full screen. Below that the little hand can be clicked to notify me that you want to speak but because there are many of you the best way to raise a question is to enter your question in the questions box in your control panel and I'll ask it for you either during the presentation or at the end. If we don't get to all of your questions I will try to get you an answer via email after the webinar is finished. Finally you have two options for connecting to audio via your computer over VoIP or by phoning in. If you click on phone call it will give you a phone number to call with an access code to this webinar and a personal identification number for you individually. As a reminder this session is being recorded and the presentation slides will be made available through our web pages noted on the screen. Okay that's it so let's get to it. Our presentation today is an overview of community economic development what it is and how in a time of increasing economic and environmental change you can incorporate it into your economic development efforts to build resiliency for your community. I will be attended today by my colleague Alex Zachinuk who will be giving us a sneak peek at some results from the 2018 local economic development survey and providing some tips for how you can use data from it to inform your decision making but before that I'd like to introduce our speaker Jeremy Stone. Jeremy has over 17 years of community economic development experience throughout North America and internationally. His career has included non-profit lending to historically marginalized entrepreneurs, community economic development planning with rural and urban communities and extensive small business technical assistance and consulting. He's also a leader in economic resilience and has worked on various disaster recoveries including Hurricane Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the economic recovery of Lower Manhattan after 9-11 and the 2013 Colorado floods. Jeremy is currently the director of the community economic development program at Simon Frazier University and is completing a PhD in community and regional planning at the University of British Columbia. Jeremy Stone thanks for coming to speak with us today. Let me. Thanks so much. Give you control. All right. Are we good to go? Good to go. All right. So welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us today. So today I'll be speaking about resilience and community economic development and how they work together. So just to give a little bit of background on me and the program here, the Simon Frazier University community economic development program has been around for 30 years, started in 1989 and it's worked with hundreds and hundreds of practitioners across Western Canada. Currently we're housed in the faculty environment and we take a really quadruple bottom line focus, bringing together economy, social equity, environment, and cultural appropriateness into our work. Me, you've heard a little bit about my bio. I've been doing this for about 18 years now and the big thing I think for today's purposes that besides the background in community economic development that whole time, I've also been doing disaster recovery in multiple contexts. Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Harvey, Colorado floods and many others started with 9-11 a long time ago and so over time have really seen how community economic development and economic resilience can work together. Just a quick overview of what we do here if you're ever interested. We have a certificate program for professionals who do economic development or want to integrate community economic development into their other practices. We have lots of government leaders who take the certificate and then use it in their their daily work. We also have a social economy accelerator where we usually partner with organizations like Community Futures and then provide startup programming for local entrepreneurs. And then we also have our community economic resilience work where we do planning and workshops with communities locally to help them figure out how to do their economic resilience planning. We've also been doing a lot of research lately, recently have been collaborating with the Ministry of Forest Lands Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development to help them think through community economic development nationally and what could be applied here in the province. So today we'll be going through a few different areas. One is just framing what community economic development and resilience is all about, then followed by some cases and then looking more specifically at planning. So first just to iterate the risks, you know every single presentation on anything disaster related has to start with the big scary slide. So this is your big scary slide for today. Basically you know the number of disasters have been increasing over time and I think what's interesting about this the right side of the slide is just noting how many losses are uninsured. There's just a lot of losses that are happening that are not covered by typical funding schemes and so we have to be thinking about well what do we do in society to deal with all of these people who are not protected in some way financially. There's lots of other ways that they're not protected as well but you know I think that there's a large gap there that we still have to focus on and part of that is you know improving the insurance industry etc but part of it is really improving the way that we deliver services. Here in DC as you can see on the left you know just in the 2017 season between floods and wildfires you know all of those dots and there are communities that were impacted or areas that had some sort of fire and clearly you know there's a need in our province to be concerned about not only resilience in general but especially economic resilience. So a few things you know sometimes people are critical of being involved in the economy because they say that you know businesses take care of themselves and that we should be really focused on people and not businesses but you know to me that's wrong. Really we we have a really big need to focus on businesses and there are some clear reasons why you know the first is that the majority of our critical life needs are provided by businesses. When you leave your home every day the majority of what you get from the outside world is provided by businesses food clothing medicine even the home that you live in was built by contractors usually that were in the private sector you know the majority of what we get access to the private businesses provide so we need to bring them online as soon as possible after a disaster. Secondly after evacuations in particular businesses are the beacons of recovery we've seen that in Fort Mac and New Orleans and other places where when you completely shut down town or a large portion of the town and people leave when they come back they're going to look for those critical lifelines is my job back is the grocery store back is the pharmacy back and if those things are back they're going to go back to where they're staying and waited out and this is especially critical when you're looking at a disaster that happens and say you know July or August because if the new school year starts and those people are are gone then you know they'll enroll their kids locally in those other communities and they might not ever come back so you know it's very critical to bring businesses back online as quickly as possible so that people can just live their daily lives businesses provide incomes goods and services for the individual recoveries so you know when people are trying to rebuild their houses or trying to you know just get their lives back on track they need businesses to pay them income so that then they can spend it on their personal recovery they need to buy goods and services from businesses so if we want our communities to come back more rapidly we need businesses to be there to support them and then finally local businesses are accountable to the community and they reduce capital leakage there's two points here one is that you know after Katrina especially we saw tons and tons of contract or fraud and and what happens in all disasters is that when something goes haywire you'll often have lots of people in vans come from out of town or out of province and they will you know start trying to provide goods and services some of them are really great but some of them end up taking people's money and taking off or they provide really poorer services or provide a shoddy work and then they can't be found afterwards so the more that we work with local businesses the more accountable they are and they can be tracked down if anything goes wrong but usually they're also really invested in doing a good job for the community the second part of that is reducing capital leakage so this refers to the notion that when you spend money locally into local businesses a larger percentage of that money stays in the community it's usually a ratio of anywhere from three to one to five to one to ten to one depending on the business and so you know people need money after disasters to be able to do all these things and if you're putting money into chain stores or putting money into out of area businesses then a lot of that money leaves just when people need it the most so trying to support local businesses you know has a revolving effect that supports local economies and recovery and then finally you know definitely finally this time businesses need support and capacity too the the notion that businesses take care of themselves and that they're okay just because they make income is wrong generally businesses are going through twin tragedies they're dealing with both the loss of like a home or loss of loved ones or you know personal trauma and then also the loss of their business or you know some sort of business related trauma so between the two you know business owners are under a great deal of stress and they generally don't have a lot of capacity especially small business owners you know they're always really focused on just trying to make a business run they don't necessarily know how to navigate bureaucracies and get access to capital in these times of need so they need support and help and and usually the only folks who could do that are non-profit organizations government etc so the the big point I think for for this talk is really how economic development and economic recovery and resilience actually work together. Judith Rodin from the Rockefeller Foundation who's been involved in the 100 resilient cities they've been doing work all over the world in this field you know her argument is that when you're investing into resilience you have benefits in the short term because a lot of times what you're doing for economic resilience like economic diversification and workforce support etc that all has short term impacts that grows the economy in the meantime and then in case of disaster there are these you know sort of unintended consequences that you're more resilient and so focusing on embedding resilience into your daily economic development has both short term and long term returns. So you know some of you may not be more familiar with community economic development but you know CED has a lot of different definitions this is the one that I like the most CED is a systems approach to problem solving for community well-being now you know to break that down you know first problem solving businesses and entrepreneurs are really problem solvers it's not just that they sell things it's that they're figuring out how to solve the problems of people locally people need access to grain they need access to clothes they need access to this or that and so business owners and entrepreneurs are figuring out huh I bet I can get that and I can sell that and make a living in the process so you know economic systems are constantly problem solving for us and CED says well it's not just you know jobs and an income that promotes that but it's a whole systemic approach it's the entire society and community and how we sort of work on things like housing or work on education and other things to bring those together and improve community well-being through the process. Some of the principles of CED include being livelihoods focused so not just looking at you know 40 hour a week jobs but looking at the whole continuum of how people you know create their livelihoods and sometimes that's just small business opportunities or you know informal trade etc diverse and inclusive making sure that everyone in the community is included so you know when we do our economic development planning that we're actually looking at folks with barriers or people who have been traditionally marginalized sustainability so making sure that not only that our economy is financially sustainable but also environmentally sustainable and culturally appropriate for for all people who live in that community. Place-based really working off the strengths of a community and the assets in this way it's really set opposed to attraction strategies most often doesn't mean that you can't do attraction strategies when you're doing community economic development but there has to be more focus on well how do we actually work with the assets we have how do we build and grow local businesses how do we spend into local businesses to keep that vibrant and then finally community controlled you know making sure that the economy and the planning for it and whatnot is done by the community so that it represents community interests and community desires. Some examples of community economic development include business retention and expansion so a lot of the work that community futures do across the province in supporting local businesses and growing them social enterprise and innovation creating businesses their focus not just on financial returns but also social and environmental returns by local programs social procurement programs you know in Nelson they have a pretty great social procurement policy you know making sure that the local businesses are supported whenever we're buying and then finally you know and this is not the the only things that are part of community economic development but the final example is just you know community-based financing there's a lot of great work that's being done by Eden Yesh and others on community investment co-ops trying to find how we can you know better pool local money to support local business. So bringing all these ideas together both the community economic development and the resilience I'd like to talk about this as community economic resilience so you know maintaining our well-being while adjusting to constant changes in the world around us. Changes may be you know very stark like a forest fire and a flood but they can be things that happen not just in a disaster context like mill closures or other factory closures or they can be things that happen over time as you know pine beetle spreads in areas or economic downturns in you know small town downtowns all of these are are different changes and the goal is is how can we accept those changes and whether those changes while still having our same level of well-being you know how can we keep a level of happiness and security through all these changes. So to explain what I mean by this a little bit more we'll look at a few cases from around the province and then also North America more generally and talk about how people integrate community economic development and resilience or use community economic development to contribute to resilience. So first example is Fogo Island in Newfoundland. What's interesting about Fogo Island is that they were predominantly fishing based community for you know a century and then and then they started to see the beginnings of a downturn and they developed a foundation called the shore fast foundation that started to not only invest locally but then buy up assets and convert them and build more diversification. So you know a couple of things that they did that were interesting was one they started making sure that all of these social enterprises that they were starting were all connected to each other so that all of the furniture that's in their their hotel is crafted by local artisans who are in a you know furniture based cooperative and so all of these different businesses work together support each other support each other then they also have these things like the economic nutrition label where they try to communicate very directly to consumers and local community of how much money they're really putting back in locally. So in this case if you can see the small writing of Fogo Island you know 63 percent of their economic benefits go back there seven percent so Newfoundland more generally Canada more generally 24 percent etc and so you know two things are happening here one is that they're educating their local community to buy local to support you know the community businesses to develop more community based businesses but then also they've created some real buffers to variations in the fishing industry and and as that has collapsed more fully they've been able to to weather that and and be able to have a healthy economy despite it. Here in BC Checumus Community Forest just outside of Whistler it's a really interesting example because what they did here was you know create a community forest it was you know public private partnership in that senior levels of government devolved the forest control to the local community they developed an organization to manage that and then even though they still continue to have cuts in the forest they've reduced those cuts and started investing into other types of businesses so one is the the tourism side so they developed this beautiful center that is used for all kinds of events they've put in more programming into the forest to bring people in to use it but then they've also started using carpet offsets as a way to monetize the forest without cutting it down so they were able to sell those offsets on the market. It's a kind of a complicated approach and it's not one that's necessarily going to work in every community but what is interesting about it is that they reduced the reliance on the forestry aspect of the forest were able to diversify and what's also cool about this is just looking at the the structure itself that they built for the center it's raised it's very sensible to the flood plain so that it's right on the banks of a river so that if there is flooding that asset doesn't get impacted they're still able to you know to reuse it in the future so you know this is a really great example of development that is you know sensitive to potential disaster but then is also diversifying and being very community focused. Kanaka Bar Band is a very interesting example also from here in BC what if you hear the the stories they tell it they have a really great description on the website and I encourage you to go check it out but you know they basically found that by the 70s and 80s the toll of colonialism had really you know run a deep course and you know they said we want to be able to to be self-sufficient and self-reliant and and so they started focusing on local planning to take over you know local assets and resources and build a really you know sustainable and resilient economy and society and so they started doing that over the course of 20 30 years now they've you know bought up a number of assets locally a gravel pit they got access to the the water supply there have been doing a lot of really interesting business developments around those things and and and have also focused on education and employment so now you know recently there was an interview where they had you know mentioned that they had 100% employment now and 100% graduation rate for band members and you know well another interesting part of this is now they've turned their eye towards climate change and they've said you know we believe in climate change we're going to prepare for it and so they've taken the same approach to their you know asset assessment early on in their community economic development work and saying well what do we have locally that we can build on and have translated that into a vulnerability assessment and so now they're assessing well how do we actually you know identify what our vulnerabilities are how do we contribute back to you know plugging those vulnerabilities and making us more resilient and and I'm really excited to see where they go with this but I think just the the planning aspect of it alone is really inspiring by local campaigns they're a real favorite of mine not everybody's is into them as others but you know I think that just a constant education of of local people around buying locally is important after the Joplin tornado in Missouri the the city was devastated it ripped through town as you can see in that impact path map and most of that was down through their commercial corridor and so they had 485 businesses that were impacted and what was great about them is that they immediately went into action so the mayor and chamber of commerce got out there started messaging you know you have to shop locally you have to shop Joplin because we need that money to stay locally right now and and then they you know developed signs of there were big green signs that they would put in front of any business because all the businesses sort of looked the same whether you were open or closed it all looked really ragged so all the ones that were open they created the signs they put them out front they were like hey open for business it was very bright and attractive and and they just got going and and that's turned into a longer term you know by local campaign and what was was interesting is that you know they had a ton of businesses reopen the majority of their businesses reopen and then they had new businesses even come out of that and you know statistically speaking that bucked every trend you know the the majority of the you know areas that are impacted by disaster show that maybe 25 to half of your businesses come back you know many go out of business either right away or within the first two years it's it's a pretty bad scenario in most cases for a catastrophic disaster so for them to have such a great recovery is just outstanding and I think this example shows both you know how you know a by local campaign could be repurposed for a you know local resilience campaign but then also how you know it can a disaster like this can bring people together and sort of chart them on a localism path that will sustain the economy in the future. Another good example of of community futures work especially is here in in BC following the 2017 fires you know the caribou region those CFs started working to bring financial assistance to the local community and and you know they were very flexible in their financing they had you know low cost financing they had one page applications it was very simple and straightforward and then when they got it out to the community people you know it wasn't just their borrowers who were allowed to borrow they were allowed other businesses to come and borrow and even if people had poor credit they worked with them to to still get access to financing they just had to rejig some of the the requirements overall I think they're you know two or three great lessons out of this you know one is that the existing flexible financing from a community economic development perspective was already in place that infrastructure was there for rapid response after disaster and if you know anything about you know recovery financing in the province or just really in North America more generally outside sources take a long time it'll often take six months or nine months or even a year many of the people in the caribou region had been facing you know insurance payout delays some up to 14 months so being able to have you know a lender that exists that already does you know on the ground you know like a sort of character based lending or you know enough of that technical assistance around lending that banks normally can't do you know that already builds up a local economy to be more resilient but then after a disaster you know there are those opportunities to you know sort of change direction focus more on recovery financing and support businesses that have been impacted. One last note on this one is that the the CFs and this isn't just in the caribou you know also Grand Forks Community Futures Boundary did the same thing but you know they worked really hard on restructuring loans giving interest holidays you know payment holidays that sort of thing so that businesses were able to to have sort of a breather during this time and not all banks can do that and it's great to see when both banks and you know non-profit institutions etc are able to to fill that gap. Heading back to New Orleans I'm originally from the Gulf Coast and I've spent a lot of time there and also we have a lot of disasters down there so we've gotten pretty good at some of this but there's two last examples that I'll just draw from my work there that I think really translates anywhere. One is the New Orleans Office of Workforce Development and what's really interesting about them is that they spend a lot of time working with people with barriers working with people coming you know through public assistance and trying to you know connect them to job opportunities. Now one of the the interesting parts about this is that whenever they hold a job fair for for anyone for regular jobs they keep a list of people and they always ask them are you available to work after a disaster because they found that those people who are going through their offices are usually the first ones displaced you know they're low skilled labor they're they usually don't have a lot of job opportunities and so you know they always ask them are you available to work in case there's a disaster they keep a database of those names and then when something happens and it invariably does but when something does happen then they have that list to draw upon so usually the first people to call are the the parks department because they need people doing debris removal so they start calling all the people on the list and saying hey are you around to do debris removal and they start bringing those people over but they also have outside businesses who call and say hey you know we're looking for 10 people to join a job site or this or that and so they're able to start connecting those people to jobs it's a very simple action to maintain that list but it has profound impacts because if people are going to be out of work for a month or two months or six months especially those who are on the margins of income stability you know that's that has a huge impact for them so you know I really like this approach and then finally the southeast Louisiana fisheries assistant center this was something that I worked on gosh 13 14 years ago now and so that's my little fresh face in the back the tall guy on the right and you know what we found was that when we were responding to the recovery that the fishermen especially they were impacted in ways that like other people weren't necessarily so they have a lot of different needs from lots of different agencies so permitting and licensing agencies in in the state capital and then banks that might be in another area and then Red Cross and other folks were in different areas and and we just found that a lot of people didn't know all the resources that were out there they had a lot of needs that were going unmet so we worked together with state and federal leaders we brought together a good amount of money and we got a free trailer from the local parish and then we put it all together and started the center and it was a one-stop shop for people to come through they were able to get access to all forms of of assistance all the agencies were co-located and and not only was this good for that disaster but then we just kept it afterwards so then that became a hub for all commercial fishermen to come back to and get access to resources for you know just their daily business needs and then when the BP oil spill happened they already knew where to go and and so they all just came back and then we started doing you know grant processing and loan processing and all kinds of other services so you know I think it's a really great example of how you know creating hubs for small business or for you know business retention expansion those can be used as your your you know points of of connection to communities during disaster and and again it's that blend of the economic development and community economic resilience so finally I'd like to talk a little bit about planning I noticed on the invite list that there were a lot of folks who you know are coming from local governments and whatnot so you know I think the the first thing I always hear when I talk about this stuff is wow we can't do that it's too expensive you know we don't have the staff for it and I completely feel your pain I get it but I think that there are lots of ways to do this that are cheaper and that are incremental in nature so the the first place to start is to just think well how do our plans support economic resilience generally people have you know communities have economic development strategies or economic development plans and and even they have emergency management plans but it's rare that any of those plans have anything to do with resilience or have resilience incorporated or you know economic resilience in particular in the emergency management plans so an example of this is some work I did after the Colorado floods we went and visited 25 communities we developed like this 52-point matrix where we looked at every single plan and then economic development plan and then had all their other plans from that community and we sort of surveyed the whole thing and we looked them from the perspective of research and knowledge building for resilience do they have recovery planning embedded do they have governance structures like a connection to emergency management in their economic development plans etc and and we knew what the results would be and they came back pretty much as expected those blue bars are not observed in the plans the majority of what we were looking for was just not there and and we went back and did interviews afterward with all of these communities and asked them specifically about their plans and said you know we didn't see any of this in there was it somewhere else is it like you know just common knowledge between you that you don't have written down and they said no that's pretty accurate you know we haven't been thinking about that stuff or if they have been thinking about it they haven't gotten to the level planning yet and and so this you know this is potentially problematic but it's also an opportunity where we can start thinking about well how do we embed some of these concepts into our plans if you think it's just Colorado last year last year we did a piece well we did a little review of plans in the Kootenai area not to pick on the Kootenai at all but I just happened to be going there and I looked at a lot of local plans and and it had the same same effect you know there are just a lot of things that are not observed so this isn't something that's like bad like people haven't you know caught on and they're behind it's just that we haven't gotten to this point yet where we've really started realizing how we can embed this in our planning and so I think you know some of the work that we're doing at the CED program and that the province is doing you know especially at the ministry level is trying to think of well how do we actually connect these things together so one way to to start thinking about this is a whole community approach the whole community approach has you know made it pretty big in the states FEMA has adopted this approach and it's also been started to be adopted here in Canada but the whole idea is you know government is not completely responsible for disasters and businesses aren't completely responsible for economic recovery there's a whole group of people in the community who own little bits and pieces and who can contribute little bits and pieces so like colleges and universities they have business programs where there are lots of faculty and staff and students who can support you know planning processes they can support information gathering from the community they can even implement some of the technical assistance programming on the back end emergency managers have a role to play just in coordinating their activities with the private sector the business technical assistance providers like community futures like other nonprofit organizations have a real strong role to play chambers of commerce in both representing business interests but also pushing out information and organizing businesses financial institutions developing products that are appropriate for you know emergency management and recovery making sure that money is flexible that is already out there so that you know repayment plans can actually weather these disruptions other nonprofits and associations so you know I teach a course at Tulane on economic recovery and the the one thing that I have all my students do because they're mostly social work students so they have nothing to do with economic development or recovery but I talked to them about well what are you know have take a local nonprofit and write an economic resilience plan from their point of view so it could be an association of food workers or it could be an immigrant association lgbt you know any kind of organization all of those organizations have businesses in their communities that are important to them that perhaps they represent or they liaise with all of them can do really great case management with those businesses they can be set up after a disaster to have their own little plans to focus on okay well all of our lgbt serving businesses we're going to reach out to them and make sure that they get access to support or you know all of the you know tourism-based businesses or you know local you know food-based businesses we're just going to work in our lanes and so you know I think it's really important to rely on those organizations to provide support services and do that case management individual residents all have a role you know there's a lot of volunteerism that can be done but I think it's also just motivating them to buy locally and support their local businesses and then you know finally labor unions other labor organizations anything that represents the workforce is really critical to involve so a couple of examples of planning one that I think is really great and it's catching on it's something that we're doing now at Simon Fraser is to is this resilient bill approach that they started doing in San Francisco and what they did was bring together sort of the community development community economic development strategies with resilience and say well how do we do you know place-based resilience planning and so really looking at what are the local assets what do we rely on in all these different areas and then what do we what do we do with the gaps you know what are the vulnerabilities there and so they'll bring together all these community members go through a mapping process talk it through of like well what does you know like what do we want like what businesses do we need to return what sort of development do we need to do in the short term so like fill the gaps but then after disaster what are we going to do if we have gaps remaining and so it's a really great approach that's catching on kind of globally at this point I know they're doing some in Battersea in England and then doing it in Vancouver so you know it's been a pretty great approach. A more local version is in Port Coquitlam I like to use this photo of Tara Stroop she's the one of the emergency managers in Port Coquitlam and she's a really amazing person and I think this kind of Photoshopped image that they have out there is great of her because because really she's in some ways single-handedly move forward the process of preparation for economic recovery or economic resilience and and she just realized at some point as she was doing some educational work that they didn't have a lot for recovery planning and so so the first thing that she did especially in the business sector was to go out and do a survey and just find out like are you prepared for a disaster you know do you have insurance do you have these supports etc and once she got more information she knew a little bit more about the gaps she went back out and did these discovery sessions where they would bring together business owners and sort of vet what they had heard from the surveys then they started doing once they got an idea from the business owners of what they wanted then they started doing continuity planning workshops where they would go through different aspects like you know what do you do in case of utility loss or what do you do in case of insurance etc and and then finally you know she started bringing in you know bigger players to sort of give their case study approaches so she brought in the Walmart emergency operation center they carry on a 24-hour day 365 day year emergency operation centers for their communities all across North America and she brought in others to to sort of explain like how they go about dealing with economic resilience all of this has been done on a shoestring budget almost all the people that she's had involved have been working on a volunteer basis they have gotten some pieces of money here and there to fund it but you know I think it's a really great example of a the shoestringing of this kind of work and then b just the fact that you can have one local champion who picks this up and carries it forward she's been recognized by UBCM and others for this work and you know I just think that if we could sort of replicate this model in other parts of the province you know there would be a real strengthening of economic resilience so takeaways you know there's a few sets of takeaways I have here one is to learn and work incrementally I always encourage people to either establish or commandeer a regular meeting group or round table you know like get a task force together and it doesn't have to be from scratch it could be some group that already exists but just infiltrate that group and then start you know promoting this message and get people to start focusing on learning and planning you know one good thing is to collaborate with partners to do some low-cost research so collaborate with local universities or local nonprofits try to get out there and have them do some surveys on your behalf or do some you know ground-true thing find out what your vulnerabilities are the opportunities the gaps and and then once you get all that research together make a list I mean to me it's really simple as that if you can make a list for for like all these possibilities then you can hopefully you know move forward and and develop an approach running low on batteries I apologize if it's a problem and then the finally once you make that list support the execution of the list and and I think the the the point here is to support it it's not that any of you have to actually execute the list on your own but support bringing that whole community together to talk about these issues so the next takeaway is to just re-purpose assets to reduce costs and time there's a ton of stuff out there that already exists call centers and info guides you know that you can use for for recovery sister city and corporate mo use you know just this whole list case management that exists already programs that exist all of these things can be sort of crafted towards a an economic resilience model and you can embed all of these assets into a plan and then finally just start small and workshop it you know I think a lot of times people think oh well we need to go out and get a hundred thousand dollar grants and like make this big you know system to do all this stuff I mean I I don't agree with that at all what we're doing is in the cd program now is working with communities just do small low cost planning exercises you know the one approach is to to actually do use a planning tool that we've made to sit down with local leaders and go through you know what are the the risks locally to the economy what can you do to mitigate it you know set the priorities and the cost and then you just sort it and you've got your list right there of things that you can work on over the year over two years ten years we're also doing planning exercises where you know we can sit down with the community and have them sort of go through what are scenarios locally what are assets and putting them together to create sort of a mitigation or recovery plan this stuff doesn't have to be expensive it doesn't have to be super time consuming but once you've gone through them then you have a roadmap of of where you want to go and if you want to dig deeper and spend a lot more money you can but if you don't you can work with that whole community to parcel out little pieces and have them take it forward so that's it for me thanks so much everyone for for paying attention and being involved and yeah that's it thanks so much Jeremy that was a really interesting and fun presentation if there are any questions please put them in the question box and i'll be happy to ask Jeremy them but i did have just one question from your presentation like it sounds like you've been working across multiple communities across the us and vc and have you found that there's some commonly overlooked aspects of community economic development and resiliency planning that you find again and again when you come into these communities that you could identify and maybe uh stop it happening in the future um here let me change my audio again um you know what i would say is that um there's generally there's generally two commonalities one is that um people are they have some trepidation around this you know it's like there's generally not enough um uh understanding or belief that this can happen there's a lot of fear and i think rightful fear that you know governments have and emergency managers have on taking on this kind of stuff and so um so you know there's you get into a community you're like hey here's all the things you can do and they're like ah i don't know like you know i don't think i can i can get to that right now and so you know partly it's trying to just sort of walk people through and give them the easy pieces to um to start building up and craft the narrative locally so that people think that it's possible um and then the other thing that i noticed is that people have a ton of assets that they're just not utilizing so much so you know they've got um you know great leaders locally who are embedded in the community they have lots of knowledge but it's just not all being organized down this track and so um you know i think that that's the useful part of the planning exercises is to just really be able to map your entire community and say hey we've already got a lot of infrastructure for resilience already we just need to to do it so um yeah those to me would be the two big commonalities yeah absolutely oh thanks for that um so i've got no more questions but uh before we go i just wanted to introduce my colleague alex to talk about the 2018 community uh local economic development survey so i'll pass it over to you alex this has been hiding over here in the corner yeah thanks ben uh good morning folks so yeah i just want to speak quickly to um a few results in the survey i did recently that i think can actually help put some of what Jeremy said in context in terms of what the next steps can be for us as communities in bc moving forward with the way the ecosystem kind of is now and hopefully that's helpful to you in your planning um so this survey was in the field from september to october of 2018 and it targeted people anyone working in economic development so whether that's through local governments or regional groups non-profits tourism organizations those kinds of people uh and just to get a sense of their priorities kind of what they want to do what they're struggling to do uh what they're working on now their goals and try to roll some that together and there's a few findings from that survey that i think can be useful here the full result was the full results aren't public yet so this is kind of a sneak peek of things that seem relevant to the topic at hand uh so to open it up i'm going to to Jeremy's point about you know this concept of community economic development is a more kind of holistic view in this sort of quadruple bottom line idea uh we had asked people what their main economic development priorities were in the long run and i think you see really good evidence here that a kind of broader more holistic perspective is developing so most popular now and you know forever and always is creating jobs kind of the bread and butter of traditional active but improving residents quality of life the sort of more holistic idea comes before even raising incomes so there is evidence that people starting to think about this in a more multimodal way growing population environmental sustainability both seen as kind of equally important through a pc so do as you're engaging in these conversations and reaching out to people about you know community active planning and resiliency is part of that bear in mind that views of active are expanding and these conversations are happening already you're not going to have to start that from scratch uh we didn't ask about resiliency in in the survey specifically unfortunately but we did ask about sustainability and what people were doing to ensure their active was sustainable uh and you'll see a good chunk of people but still less than half are using urban planning to prepare for natural disasters and floods and wildfires are some of the more common so that's starting to happen but it's still less than half of the communities and it's certainly fewer communities then are at risk of being affected by these things um and a tiny minority less than 10 percent we're using the technical options like we had here incorporating environmental risk management tools into active planning uh very few people are doing that might be capacity issue might be willingness for an awareness issue but regardless of take away from this is it right now resiliency planning strategies especially from an active perspective aren't happening very often so there is there's a lot of space to improve there as well and I want to close on a few points about partnerships and creating partnerships in BC Jeremy stressed a lot of the importance of kind of bringing the right people together and working together to get this done and even just among the priorities we asked about which again didn't include resiliency 36 percent of priorities in the province aren't being addressed through a partnership right now so there's a huge huge space to kind of start these conversations have to start these these partnerships to address these issues uh odds are you're not being left behind odds are these conversations aren't happening yet the other encouraging thing especially to the point about kind of starting small and keeping things simple in the early days people prefer less informal arrangements um collaborative projects and personal connections were the preferred forms of collaboration throughout BC so you know there's no need to kind of go into this like Jeremy said with a fully developed plan and everything ready to go firing on all cylinders have some conversations the opportunities there just reach out to folks that being said do bear in mind that um there's a pretty clear way in which people tend to prioritize the groups of people they work reach out to you know chambers of commerce other governments local businesses in general so just kind of doing a blanket survey those tend to come first some of the folks that Jeremy is mentioning is being very important so reaching out to residents especially seniors local businesses who serve a specific group or work in a particular sector so you know either those that will be most impacted by disaster or most necessary after disaster people almost never get around to talking to those kinds of groups you're doing that kind of targeted consultation so the opportunities are there for conversations you can start to have them but you're going to have to reach out a little bit beyond your usual network and and look beyond the usual suspects for those collaborations to happen so those are three takeaways that um yeah not not necessarily to expand on what Jeremy said but just to kind of put it in context of what we know about the way things look in BC right now views of active are expanding resiliency planning is still in common in the province and there are opportunities for conversations if you look a little bit beyond those usual networks so with that I'll pass it back to Ben there's any other questions I'm happy to field them or you can follow up with an email to economicdevelopment.gov.bc.ca we can chat a little bit more there and hopefully that helps you put some of this into action thanks a lot and a back thanks for that Alex um that survey is not available yet but um hopefully in the next couple of weeks looking to the middle of April that's going to be available so check out our website um to get all of the the results from that um there's also that'll be on our website as I said gov.bc.ca forward slash economic development but you'll also find a lot of other resources on that website um such as a business retention and expansion tool which is critical part of community economic development um so make sure to have a look on there um let's just finish up we're talking about some upcoming webinars so April 25th we've got our community gaming grants program webinar and June 6th what to say to foster visitation post wildfire marketing messages so that's all about uh you've had a wildfire obviously come through your community um how can you reattract tourism um if you want to sign up to our email list our webinar list that's the url um and if you hear about in our webinars through other sources you probably aren't on this list and we want you to be on there so make sure you head there and when you're signing up just note that the title is your job title and company name is your organization and we're pretty much done for the day but once you leave this webinar there will be a window that pops up asking you to take a brief feedback survey please take a few minutes to respond as your feedback helps us improve the series the recording of this webinar will go up on you youtube uh viewing and sharing the link will be sent out by email to everyone who's registered on today's webinar and will be added to the economic development website in the VCRDs exchange area thank you for joining us thank you Jeremy for your insightful presentation and uh we hope to see you all in the next couple of weeks bye


All right, good afternoon. My name is Henry Simons. I am the Assistant City Manager of Operations for the City of Columbia. And we would like to welcome you. And thank you, of course, for your presence today as we celebrate the new amenities here at E.B. Sessions Park. Thank you to our mayor, Steve Benjamin, city council members, our entire council, as well as Councilman McDowell, who's present with us today. Thank you so much, sir, for being here today. I also want, of course, to acknowledge our city manager, Mr. Teresa Wilson for all of our continued leadership and guidance on our initiatives with Parks and Recreation. We are grateful for another ribbon-cutting ceremony. This, again, confirms our commitment to the citizens of this community as well as our great city. This portion of the project would not, of course, be possible without funding provided through HUD's Community Development Block Grant Program, in which we were awarded close to $110,000 to complete this project. E.B. Sessions Park renovations include a new playground, as you see behind me, and site amenities, which include a new shade, shelter, or sails, climbing activities, slides, bridges, swings, and a mini-go-round. The surfacing of the playground is engineered wood fiber and the large shade sails incorporated into the playground help to keep the play environment cool. We are very proud of what we've accomplished here at E.B. Sessions Park. And we'll continue to work hard to improve the quality of life through Parks and Recreation for this community and across our great city. So thank you so much for being here on today. Now, at this time, we would have J. Kevin Speaks, who is the vice president of the Booker Washington Heights Labor Association, for some remarks. And that'll be followed by our councilman, Agment Dow. And I'll come back after that with some acknowledgments. Kevin. Thank you. I'm J. Kevin Speaks, vice president of the Booker Washington Heights Neighborhood Organization. I've had the pleasure of being a part of the first dedication ceremony of the E.B. Sessions Park held 1996, 1997 year. Emma B. Sessions was a resident of this community. She was an educator and a member of St. John Baptist Church located just behind us. Ms. Katherine Bellfield at that time was our neighborhood association president who took it upon herself in conjunction with the residents of the community to dedicate this land which once stood a two-story house that burned during those early years of 1990s. However, to be a part of this ribbon-cutting ceremony today, I'm sure that our neighborhood leaders before us are rejoicing that we are carrying on the tradition of developing our Booker Washington Heights community with a nice playground for our children and for our seniors to come have a nice brisk walk and relax under the shaded trees areas. Again, thank you, City of Columbia, for this opportunity and for those of you who are a part of this ribbon-cutting ceremony. We here in Booker Washington Heights community thank you. Just a word of thanks to each of you for being here today. As we cut the ribbon, as we continue to grow in the Booker Washington Heights, it is extremely acknowledging to know that with the help of our Assistant City Manager, HUD, CDBG, we were able to acquire $109,000 for this park. This community continues to grow, continues to expand itself. With the ribbon-cutting ceremony today for E.B. Sessions Park, it provides an opportunity for residents in this area, children in this area, to have fun and to be in an environment where this equipment and all that there is therein, to provide for their health, security, and we are appreciative. Please remember Booker White, Booker Washington Heights, this is not the only thing that has taken place in this area. In addition to all of the things that has taken place this last year, in excess of $600,000 has been expended in this particular area, and we are not through yet. So we're here today to celebrate, celebrate the completion, celebrate the ribbon-cutting, and also to celebrate what this city and what this community continues to do. So thanks for being here today, undergird yourselves with all that we've said, and in addition, know that we aren't through yet. Thank you very much. Thank you again, Councilman McDowell, for your remarks. Just some acknowledgments. A lot of work goes into these projects, so we want to, number one, of course, acknowledge our Vice President of the Booker White, Booker Washington Heights Neighborhood Association, Mr. J. Kevin speaks for being here and his remarks as well. We also want to thank our local HUD Office Director, Christine Foy, for her commitment as well. Our very own Gloria Said, the Director of Community Development and her entire team. Also want to acknowledge Dolly Bristow, our Community Development Administrator that's present with us today. Thank you so much for your support and commitment to this project. We also want to thank our Parks and Recreation Leadership Team, led by Mr. Randy Davis, our Director of Parks and Recreation. Of course, our Deputy Director, Kenyan Bryant. We also have Todd Martin, our Project Manager here with us. This is our entire team for our continued effort to do what we can to improve these amenities in our communities. We are grateful to have this opportunity to help our young people in this community. So at this particular time, we're gonna move into the actual ribbon cutting itself. I'm gonna ask a few of our members to come to take part in that process. And then after that, we'll have time for some additional interviews. Again, thank you all so much for being here today.


Search for a home on any device, anytime, anywhere. Private Property, a home for everyone. A warm welcome back to Winter Home on Afternoon Express on this Friday afternoon. Now Private Property has treated us to some really fantastic property advice on Afternoon Express over this fourth season of Winter Home and today is no exception. The rest in Cape has some of the most beautiful scenery in the world and property in the province is incredibly popular. Today we have David Brits joining us in the loft who is going to chat to us a little bit more about the property and estate market in the western Cape. Welcome to the loft, David. Thank you, Dan. So let's quickly understand where the property market is in the western Cape. I've had the privilege of living there and property is so expensive. Is it still profitable? Is it still an investment? Where are we at? Yes, then definitely Cape Town is obviously one of the most expensive metropoles in South Africa. Later stats show that property in Cape Town is on average 400,000 rand more expensive than any other metropole at the moment. So measuring at the price of 1.4 million rand for average house. There is a difference of 400,000 rand between Cape Town and any other... And the next competitor. It's a very popular area, clearly. So what does that mean for the property market? Is it a good investment? Bad investment? Definitely. If you look at the later stats on FMB, they show over the last five years Cape Town property grow by 53.7% over the last five years. And the closest metropolis was Lunatal with 30.2%. So just under 20% higher growth in the next metropole. Nothing only come in fourth place on 24.7%. So that gives you a good indication where Cape Town is at the moment versus the other metropoles. Obviously there's a huge demand because it's a small surface area and one of the most beautiful places in the world. And it's not like Cape Town can go anywhere because either you've grown to the sea or you've grown to Table Mountain. I was driving through Camps Bay and you mentioned how dense the area is.  So it was going for a billion South African rand from the city of Cape Town. Yeah, actually five hectares. The city of Cape Town sold for a billion rand. It was recently in an article. So space is important I think for people. And that's maybe why people are starting to look at properties that are expanding outside of just the Cape Town and sort of city bowl area. Definitely. If you look at the northern suburbs, especially if you look at Val de Vie. I think Val de Vie in my opinion is one of the best states in South Africa. You get Anaclada Fountain recently launched by Rabi. Also a very, very nice estate. And then you get your middle class, I would say middle upmarket class. It's states like the Satari country state on your way to Somerset West. Acon Creek for instance, recently launched by MSP. And then you get your estate that you cater for your first-time home buyers as well as your young and upcoming professionals. But there you will look at your Burgundy estate for instance. I think Burgundy estate was launched in 2006. And then estate launched to the words the end of 2010. Obviously that is also doing very well. It's also very, very attractive to investors. Alright, because of your ROI return on investment you get there. I can't tell you the type of growth they will get there. The demand for rent dates. So if you're serious about looking at the property market and particularly in the western Cape, you should be serious about looking into a state. And a lot of them are moving towards the Cape, Weinlands areas. First of all because they're just incredibly stunning. People are realising I'd rather drive a little bit further into work in town if I need to, as long as I can come home to a beautiful view in the afternoon and the evening to enjoy that lifestyle. How definitely are. I think the people have a new trend in the lifestyle of the state. It's that typical work lift plate type of thing. After the lifestyle. But I think the biggest driver behind all these states is security. Alright, we all know we're in South Africa. So security is key for you and your family. As you drive further afield, I mean you get to the beautiful garden roots. Nice. Muscle Bay. And everyone seems to be buying into that relaxed lifestyle out there. Yeah, and I think Muscle Bay and George has always been a very popular holiday destination, especially for the Fahleys or the people up north. So yeah, they like to invest in the states like Fancourt. Fancourt recently came second in the top 10 golf, golf estate competition in South Africa. Followed by Pinnacle Point that came in at 5th prize. And then you get the Pazulas. Alright, some Molas there. Yes, there's a couple of nicer states in that area. And definitely very, very high in the Mount area. It's George, and obviously nice now. So the Western Cape property market is doing well. Put your money into it, but put it into the states because that's going to continue to expand and grow. Definitely. David, thank you. Thank you. Well there you have it, the lowdown on what's happening in the property market in the Western Cape. Now don't forget to enter the Winner Home Grand Prize Competition on private property to stand a chance to win your choice of the three multi-million-rand homes as completed by our design duos. On the Eye of Africa is state in Johannesburg. Now this weekend is your last chance to enter as the competition closes at midnight, this coming Sunday, the 29th of October. So don't wait another minute. Log on to privateproperty.co.za. Answer an easy question and then vote for your favorite design duo. It's as easy as that. And you could be the lucky viewer of their own dream home. Now coming up after the break, the judges take a look around those lounges and make their final verdict.