Rising Economy 2030 — Q&A from Overview Webinars (Oct 28 & 29, 2025)

This new initiative is designed to grow momentum and awareness of the economic potential of Greater Victoria and to offer leaders and residents a set of tools that can challenge some of the negative narratives around our region.

Find some key documents and reference materials here: 

• • Recording of the public webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b481FtMp2S8

• • Rising Economy 2030:
    • • Plan overview: https://ourrisingeconomy.com/
    • • Revised Greater Victoria Socio-Economic Profile: Here.
    • • Greater Victoria Economic SWOT Analysis: Here.
    • • 5-Year Activities, Outputs & Long-Term Outcomes (2026-2030): Here.
    • • Greater Victoria Possibility Charter: https://choosepossibility.ca/

• • More about the South Island Prosperity Partnership: https://southislandprosperity.ca/

• • Rising Economy Taskforce Final Report: “Igniting Momentum:  Recommendations for Greater Victoria to Overcome Economic Stagnation and Achieve our Potential”: https://southislandprosperity.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Rising-Economy-Taskforce-Final-Report-September-2025-1.pdf 

Please let us know if you have any additional questions or concepts that you’d like explored. 

Questions & Answers:

1. 1. Q: How can municipalities get involved in the projects and initiatives outlined in the Rising Economy 2030 plan? 

Local governments are essential stewards of local and regional economies. As is the case in cities, towns and regions across Canada and elsewhere, local governments can champion the local economy in several ways: 

• • Operating local economic development mandates that work with their business community and improve their commercial districts through activities such as stewarding in the public realm (beautification and wayfinding initiatives), investing in cleanliness and safety, maintaining essential infrastructure and services to these areas, ensuring a ‘return on taxation’ for these clients so they stay in the municipality, provide services to residents and visitors and contribute to a diversified tax base. 

• • Municipalities can also position themselves within the broader regional context by understanding what makes their jurisdiction unique and ensuring that those strengths are aligned with and enhancing the regional value proposition. However, it is clear that each place cannot be “all things to all people.” (Economies are better understood as diverse ecosystems where the goal is symbiosis between and among jurisdictions.

• • Municipalities should contribute actively to regional economic development efforts that enhance the quality of life for current and future residents by protecting and creating good, household-sustaining jobs and incomes in the region. In a region with 13 municipalities sharing a ‘commutershed’ (the geographic area from which residents derive their incomes), it’s essential that we all recognize this and play a role alongside our peers and neighbouring municipalities.

• • Further to the above, elected leaders can play a role in encouraging their peers across the metropolitan region to take an active part. Without exception, all 13 municipalities and their residents are tied to the regional economy and have a stake in issues such as attracting essential workers, ensuring their kids or grandkids have the option of building their lives close to home, diversifying the local tax base, and overall deliberately steering the economy toward a values-aligned vision unique to our region. 

• • Municipalities can also get involved at the project or sectoral level (for example, it makes more sense to have a regional agriculture strategy rather than 13 individual agriculture strategies; however, there is a role at the municipal level in ensuring that the strategy comes to life and has an impact). Other economic issues, such as attracting essential workers and diversifying the economy, should be addressed at the regional level with municipal involvement. This includes working with specific types of businesses, like manufacturers or innovation-intensive sectors like medical devices or clean tech.

2. 2. Q: How do you overcome housing affordability as a barrier to attraction/retention? What levers do SIPP members have?

On issues such as affordability, we support work within the housing “ecosystem,” but housing is not part of SIPP’s mandate directly. We hope to build more household, “base income” supporting jobs across sectors that can assist in making the high cost of living more manageable for people, while supporting the work of other organizations focused directly on the housing file. 

With regard to attraction, however, we do play an active role in “place marketing,” which enables us to recruit essential talent to the region. For example, over the last year, we’ve been promoting the region to doctors to help address the doctor shortage. You can find this external-facing promotion platform, operated by SIPP, at victoriarising.ca. Additionally, some of the doctor profiles can be found in this section: https://victoriarising.ca/on-the-rise/. 

3. 3. Q: What about tourism? I didn’t see that mentioned in your strategy. 

SIPP works collaboratively with organizations who champion our regional tourism sector, such as Destination Greater Victoria (for example, we collaborate around key advocacy areas, such as the need for transportation infrastructure or added hotel capacity, and on working groups such as the Rising Economy Taskforce, etc.). However, the reason we don’t emphasize direct stewardship of the tourism industry in our plans is that the sector is well taken care of by existing organizations, which fund the majority of their mandate through the Municipal & Regional District Tax Program (MRDT). This levy allows a surcharge on hotel-room stays, which is then transferred to the local tourism group(s) to invest in destination marketing and other programming. Because the Greater Victoria region has been heavily invested in tourism over many decades, SIPP founders felt that the best approach was to look at other sectors of opportunity that haven’t been as well nurtured or supported. 

4. 4. Q: What is the cost of losing volunteer spirit because young people with the energy to volunteer are leaving at a fast pace?

While it is difficult to cite a specific cost, this is a major risk to the region and its future quality of life since youth and young people represent “the future” of the communities they grow up in. The report cited during the webinar (here), released in July 2025 by the BC Business Council, revealed that the province has entered a period of net out-migration for the first time in 20 years. Perhaps more troubling was the statistic within the report that revealed that of all the people who’ve left BC over the last three decades, 77% have been under the age of 40. This is a clear indication that many young people and those in their mid-career don’t see a pathway to a vibrant future here and are therefore choosing to move elsewhere. 

This statistic should serve as a wake-up call for leaders, parents, educators, and beyond, as it’s up to all of us to craft a new pathway forward. That starts with developing a new narrative about the future. This is partially why we developed the Greater Victoria Possibility Charter so that residents and leaders alike will have an engaging toolbox to flip the script and create momentum towards a future of possibility. But we must create it ourselves. Additional activities and initiatives will be outlined for The Possibility Charter in 2026. Follow along by signing up here.

Regarding the specific reference to volunteering, the reality is that many young people — from new graduates to those in mid-career — are focused on keeping their households afloat and may not be the best audience for volunteer roles. Though we always need creative and flexible ways to engage, involve and mentor them, despite these barriers. Fortunately, our region is home to many retirees and semi-retirees. From our experience, these individuals are highly engaged, possess rich talents that they’ve brought here from their diverse experiences, and many of them want to give back, be active, and mentor others. We need to find more ways to engage them and invite them into our solutions and projects.  

5. 5. Q: In the webinar session, the topic of “economic dependencies” was discussed (the types of sectors and jobs our region relies on for its household incomes). It was pointed out that our #1 largest dependency is the public sector, with over 30% of our base incomes coming from these activities (being the capital region, it makes sense), but what are some other large dependencies? Why is this important?

In the webinar, we used the example of a Mill Town to highlight the impacts “base incomes” play in local economies. In the example, the Mill brings in wealth that then circulates in the local economy through retail and service spending (and eventually leaks out due to factors such as imports, taxes & or activities like saving for retirement). If the Mill were to face a slowdown (or a shutdown), it would decimate the local economy and possibly even cause the community to disappear completely. This is why understanding where base incomes come from is so important, because everything else in the economy—retail, restaurants, services, construction, even the municipal tax base—is linked to these. But in a dynamic economy, like that of a city or metropolitan area, it’s a little more complicated than our simplified example of a Mill Town.

The data for our region is generated by BC Stats. Our largest dependency is the public sector, followed by government transfer incomes, and third by non-employment incomes (e.g., retirement income). Other smaller dependencies include the tech sector, tourism, and the construction industry (though for the latter, an important consideration isn’t that we are directly reliant on construction, but rather that we need household incomes that can afford the mortgages and rents for these products once they are built). 

Our Rising Economy 2030 plan highlights the importance of diversifying the economy in sectors of strength (such as ocean and marine (“Blue Economy”), clean technologies, and life sciences & health), where new sources of base incomes can be developed over time. 

6. 6. The topic of “AI” (artificial intelligence) was mentioned in the webinar, but I feel that it was glossed over. Do our policymakers and decision-makers understand how impactful this technology might be, and I mean that on both sides of the impact? It could destroy many jobs that make up our economy here in Victoria, but it could also help increase productivity. How do we plan for this? 

We’ve been asked this question in various forms dozens upon dozens of times over the last few months, and this is what prompted the Rising Economy Taskforce to list workforce gaps and skills shortages as one of the seven key risks that our region needs to grapple with. The reality is that the true extent to which AI will impact jobs is not well understood, simply because the technology has emerged and continues to evolve at such a rapid pace. Images and graphs like the one pasted below are circulating widely. Reports and speculation are being produced by major banks, think tanks, policy and economics researchers, and even governments themselves, forcing us to think about this on a daily basis. 

The reality, although still unclear, for local economies, is that AI will impact us in several ways – and most will be beyond our control. The key factor, in our opinion, is to do our best to prepare and adapt quickly along the way. This is one of the reasons why SIPP proposed the development of “AI adoption toolkits” in our 2030 plan. We need to first determine how local organizations are adopting AI, what the use cases might be that could be the most helpful, and then determine the roles and responsibilities that can be deployed to help us collectively adapt (e.g., the role of post-secondary institutions, local governments, non-profits, secondary schools, and the chambers of commerce).

(The image shows the decoupling of the job market with the accelerating value of the stock market, mostly driven by large AI-enabling companies such as Nvidia.)

7. 7. Q: Love the campaign – great balance of urgency, provocation, and optimism. How can we get involved in SIPP’s work or projects? 

There are several ways to get involved in SIPP’s work:  

The easiest way to stay engaged is to sign up for our weekly newsletters, allowing you to stay informed about what’s happening as it emerges:

• • Sign up for informative newsletters for SIPP and its initiatives. Click here to sign up for the weekly SIPP newsletter.  Follow the Indigenous work directly here.  Follow the Blue Economy activity led by SIPP’s COAST initiative, click “sign me up” at the bottom of this page. 

• • The next way to get involved is to sign (and share!) The Possibility Charter – it only takes a few seconds to do that at choosepossibility.ca. You’ll also receive an email asking if you would like to stay in the loop. We’ll have more activities around the Charter rolling out in early 2026 — but for now, help us build momentum!!!

• • Another way is to attend our events, such as the annual Rising Economy Conference each March. Discover more about these events at ourrisingeconomy.com or subscribe to our newsletters and wait for the registration links when they go live. 

• • You can also join advisory boards, working groups or action committees from time to time. We’ll be announcing the next of these when we’re closer to our next operational year (early 2026). So subscribe above or shoot us a note and let us know what types of things you’re looking to play a role in. 

• • SIPP also opens nominations for vacant seats on our Board of Directors each year, which are reviewed by a committee and voted on at our Annual General Meeting in June. Learn about our current board here, or wait until we release the call for nominations in the spring of 2026.