The Economic Development Select Committee wholeheartedly supports our mayor and city councillor’s initiative to establish its own economic development corporation. The new Mission Bridgehead Investment Corporation will support new economic growth and bring new opportunities and new jobs to our community.
Skyrocketing costs of land and a meager supply are making it difficult to make ends meet or even choose Mission to begin with, and I’m not talking about B.C.’s housing crisis. Instead, I seek to shed some light on the lesser-known parallel crisis facing Mission and most of the Fraser Valley, shrinking available industrial lands.
Local industrial lands with family-supporting jobs – with wages 10 percent higher than the national average – are necessary to reduce the tax burden on local residents and allow Missionites to work closer to home.
As our economy evolves more and more new businesses are looking for industrial space, but with industrial vacancy rates hovering around one per cent, they are not finding the space they need. Also, the restricted supply of industrial properties contributes to today’s record high lease rates. We need to attract all sorts of businesses to Mission, from breweries and chocolatiers to film studios and biotech labs as well as many critical to the running of a city like recycling depots we need to help them all find a home here in Mission.
The rise of e-commerce means there is growing and substantial demand from the logistics and shipping industry as companies that manage the flow of goods become essential, and they need space.
Almost half of the shipping containers coming in and out of Canada do so through the Port of Vancouver, but this crisis is forcing many companies to establish distribution centers outside the city.
Mission can take advantage of our strategic location close to Vancouver ports with access to rail lines and the Fraser River if we protect existing lands that are zoned industrial and work with businesses to find them suitable sites to build their businesses.
We are seeing governments announce bigger and bigger deficits while families, individuals, and businesses continue struggling to make ends meet, with economic indicators threatening a recession as early as the beginning of 2024. In an intensely competitive global arena, British Columbia and the City of Mission must proactively seek out investments and create an environment conducive to the growth and prosperity of our local economy.
This isn’t an impossible task. To achieve these goals, we must adopt a holistic approach that refocuses regional land use planning to prioritize local housing, local food production, and the creation of local jobs, and we must do so with urgency.
Fortunately, our local government is working to figure out where to streamline processes and bring land to market that can house the next generation of investment and jobs. In doing so they will attract new businesses to Mission and may even reduce your and my taxes.
Jack Davidson,
Chair,
Economic Development Select Committee