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As layoffs continued in the oilpatch this week, and an estimated 10,000 fewer people funnelling into the downtown every day, there is no getting away from the impact of the persistently sliding oil price, and being a landlocked and higher cost producer.

Adding insult to injury is the continuing selloff in stock markets around the world, which has seen the S&P/TSX lose more than seven per cent since the beginning of the year, along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has fallen more than 10 per cent during the same time period.

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There’s just no getting around the bad economic news.

But there is opportunity in all this — strange as it seems.

This province — and this city — has a pool of talent of educated, experienced people spanning the spectrum of finance, engineering, law and much more.

And from there rests the possibility of creating a new economy.

The science that underpins the energy sector can be applied in other ways; if anything, the announcement by scientists on Thursday that they had detected gravitational waves, which was predicted by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, underscores the importance of supporting basic research that can then be applied in other dimensions.