Canada's 4th city

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I think Calgary's 4th place will be further solidified in the coming years and not just due to it's explosive population growth. Ottawa is a political centre and therefore much of it's influence is totally dependent upon which party is in power. Trudeau's increase in the civil service by a whopping 40% in 8 years has obviously helped Ottawa and his general antipathy towards Alberta and the overall oil/gas sector has inhibited Calgary & Edmonton. Needless to say, with Trudeau being given the boot {God willing} and with PP the heir apparent, that is going to change dramatically.

The first thing PP is going to do to try to bring some kind of sanity back to the books is make massive cuts to the civil service. When gov't, especially Conservative, ones make cuts it is very much centered around the actually bureaucracy and try to instill as little damage as possible in actual local services. The Tories have very little support in Ottawa but local services hurt every part of the country including Conservative strongholds and flip ridings. People care about local service but no one gives a damn about the fat cats in Ottawa. This means a vastly disproportionate amount of these cuts are going to take place in Ottawa as well as all the spin-off jobs that benefit from Ottawa's largess.

Conversely, PP will bring in policies that emphasis oil/gas as well as general natural resource extraction/development and Calgary is the nation's economic centre for this potent part of the economy.

Oil/gas/resources are both the strength and Achilles Heel of Calgary's economy and ditto the government for Ottawa and things are about to take a huge swing in Calgary's favour much to the detriment of Ottawa.

Calgary is the business centre of the Western provinces so I do agree that the city is in 4th place in most ways. But for most people East of Manitoba, Calgary isn't seen as important as Ottawa for obvious reasons.

As for PP reducing the number of federal public servants, I don't know what his plans are because he really hasn't told us his plans. If there is any indication, the Harper government focused on higher up people and positions that they thought weren't needed for everyday operations. I had managers who were laid off back in 2008-2012 and it was bittersweet because some of the really good ones were let go but some really bad ones were as well. But they really didn't affect front-line operations. I do know that a LOT of public servants have received promotions during and after the pandemic that in my opinion weren't really necessary. And there are those in term positions who will likely not be returning once at the end.