BC Business
Being the epicentre for waves of migrants arriving in B.C., Vancouver and its neighbouring communities drive economic opportunities to the far corners of the Lower Mainland and the province as a whole.
At the heart of Southwestern B.C. lies Mission, for most of its history a blue-collar, shake and shinglemilling town on the banks of the Fraser River. The population growth and housing development that has taken over much of the surrounding Fraser Valley was late to arrive here. But these days, Mission is changing faster than just about anywhere in the province and is expected to double its population of 44,000 very quickly.
Southwest Mission, a 3,400-acre area designated for urban growth that will accommodate approximately 40,000 residents at build-out, recently adopted the Silverdale Central Neighbourhood Plan, opening up 1,811 acres for the development of more than 10,000 new homes for 25,000 residents, three elementary schools and two civic centres.
But the City of Mission has an even more ambitious plan in the works, to reclaim the largest undeveloped river frontage in the Lower Mainland. It envisions a mix of businesses, homes, shops and restaurants covering nearly 300 acres along 3.5 kilometres of south-facing shoreline on the Fraser River. The development will also enhance infrastructure to provide f lood protection to areas inland. The city has created the Mission Bridgehead Investment Corporation to help spearhead the project and coordinate efforts between the city and private landowners. The idea has turned heads such that the Economic Development Association of Canada sponsored a team from Mission to present its plan at a major international gathering of investors in France. In March 2024, Mayor Paul Horn and other city representatives showcased the waterfront plan at the MIPIM real estate investment conference in Cannes.
To understand why Mission is evolving the way it is, and why now, you have to understand the forces driving growth throughout the region. The Mainland/ Southwest is by far the most populous, most densely developed, most economically diverse part of the province.
It’s also where the vast majority of immigrants to B.C. first land and settle, and immigration has been an outsized factor in Canada’s economic growth in recent years. In just the first three months of 2024, net international migration to B.C. hit a new quarterly high of 40,840. Almost all those migrants, a mix of permanent and temporary residents (such as those on work and study permits), made their homes in Metro Vancouver. That inevitably drives demand for housing and other services; regional housing starts rose more than 20 percent in 2023 over 2022. It also encourages residents and businesses to seek out lower-cost locales outside the urban core—places like Mission.
Or, for that matter, Chilliwack. For more than a year Chilliwack Economic Partners Corp. (CEPCo) worked with Red Bull to find a suitable location for the energy drink maker’s first ingredient preparation plant outside its home base of Austria. Red Bull settled on a 15-acre parcel within the Chilliwack Food and Beverage Processing Park, which was already occupied by Molson Coors’s brewery for western Canada. It cited the location’s proximity to major road and rail links, the Port of Vancouver—Canada’s largest trade entrepot—and the U.S. border, along with the availability of fresh farm produce and skilled workers for its choice. Construction of the plant began this year. Surrey, the largest of Vancouver’s suburbs and soon to be the region’s most populous municipality, continues to boom with some 34,000 homes in various stages of development, work ongoing on the $1.4-billion Patullo Bridge replacement, plans to extend the SkyTrain system to neighbouring Langley, the site cleared for a new $2.9-billion hospital in Cloverdale and ongoing expansion of the mammoth Campbell Heights industrial park near the U.S. border.
This year Surrey was awarded the Community Resiliency Award (community more than 20,000 population) by the BCEDA for its Economic Strategy 2024. The comprehensive, 77-page document, Surrey’s first such strategy since 2017, aims to create one job for every resident worker in the city within 20 years—a lofty goal that will require the creation of more than 300,000 new jobs. It identifies four priorities: the attraction of and readiness for strategic industries; ensuring the availability of land for optimizing employment; enhancing the innovation ecosystem; and creating livable, vibrant and distinct communities.
The Mainland/Southwest is home to a large and diversified high-technology community recognized at an international level. Vancouver tied Austin, Tex., for having the highest technology job growth of all North American cities since 2021 at 26.3 percent, office leasing company CBRE determined in its Tech 30 report released in October 2023.
Local companies continue to attract noteworthy venture capital investments. For example Operto Guest Technologies raised $34 million last year to further develop its platform for automating hotel reservations, payments and other operations. Blockchain developer LayerZero Labs attracted $120 million in a Series B funding round. This year, Sanctuary AI landed a major cash infusion from the Business Development Bank of Canada and InBC Investment Corp. that brings its total raised to date to $140 million.
And there are growing clusters of companies in niches such as nuclear energy, quantum computing and antibodybased drug development.
The provincial government announced late last year it is adding a $638-million research centre to the new, $1.9-billion St. Paul’s Hospital under construction in downtown Vancouver. Connected to the hospital by an overhead “sky bridge,” the facility is meant to accelerate the testing of innovative therapies and medications in a clinical setting and help build the ecosystem of private- and public-sector life sciences research in the city.
The wide-ranging economy of Southwest B.C. is evidenced by the head offices of its largest corporations, which include telecommunications company Telus, mining giant Teck Resources and fashion designer Lululemon Athletica. In North Vancouver, the next generation of Canadian Coast Guard research vessels is coming together at Seaspan shipyards. The f irst, $1.3-billion ship is expected to be in service on the Atlantic coast in 2025, part of a multi-vessel contract stretching into the 2030s.
Bucking the slowdown in retail nationwide, Lougheed Town Centre, on the border of Burnaby and Coquitlam, is undergoing a $7-billion redevelopment. Swedish furniture brand Ikea is revamping and expanding its Richmond store—the first in Canada when it opened in the 1970s—on a budget of more than $100 million. It is expected to open its doors again late next year.
This past spring, Squamish saw the arrival of a converted cruise ship, soon to be a “floatel” housing hundreds of workers assembling the Woodfibre LNG terminal on the site of an old pulp mill. The proponents tout the $1.6-billion liquefaction plant as “the world’s first netzero LNG facility,” designed to be powered by renewable hydroelectricity. •
Mainland-Southwest: Ripple Effect
Other Regions
Vancouver Island: Welcoming Shores
Thompson-Okanagan: Urban Makeover
Kootenay: Hidden Gem
Cariboo: Pioneer Spirit
North Coast-Nechako: Sea Change
Northeast: A New Energy Era
Features
Letters