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And the biggest economic engine driving provincial GDP is Metro Vancouver itself. In 2015, Metro accounted for 73 per cent of new business incorporations in B.C. Over the last decade the value of building permits across Metro have totalled almost $65 billion. Since 2010, almost 164,000 international immigrants have settled in B.C., most of them in Metro. Meanwhile, traffic congestion grows, public transit rollouts appear to be stalled, there’s a crisis in affordable housing — average rents have increased 35 per cent over the past decade and vacancy rates for the small apartments essential to sustain a young, entry-level work force hover below one per cent. These are all critical components in any strategy that hopes to sustain real growth in the provincial economy.

This province’s economy has evolved far beyond its muscular, now-romanticized roots in the resource sector when loggers, miners and fishboats symbolized prosperity. To be sure, resource extraction and exports are still important and vital parts of the economy, but they are no longer dominant drivers.

B.C.’s oil and gas sector employs less than one per cent of the province’s labour force. It contributes less than five per cent to annual GDP. For every oil and gas worker there are almost three people employed by a motion picture industry centred on Metro, three in the performing arts, three in the publishing trade. There are four workers in agriculture and four in forestry for every one in the oilpatch. This disproportionate comparison becomes even more dramatic in other sectors. There are 17 high-technology workers and 25 tourism workers. Professional, scientific and technical workers in B.C. now outnumber oil and gas workers by a ratio of 36 to one. In construction, it’s about 40 to one and in retail business, the ratio is more than 50 to one.