Learning from Reversing the Tide: A Conversation with Victor Cumming

by hans peter meyer

Victor Cumming has made Vernon his home since 1992. His 30 years of work as a Community Economic Development practitioner, however, have taken him across Canada, and to live and work in the South Pacific, as well as Southern Africa. In Canada Victor is recognized for his long-term commitment to rural and First Nations' communities, and for his ability to effectively address the big questions in rural economic development. CIT interviewed Victor Cumming as part our ongoing follow-up activities related to the October 2008 Reversing the Tide conference in Prince George. We started by asking him about his impressions of the event, five months down the road.

Victor: The greatest value of the conference was that it brought into focus what is required for rural areas - not just municipalities and their surrounding area but large regions - for successful economic development. It really pointed to the need for BC to join a system of best practices that is proving itself internationally.

CIT: How is this different from what regional districts and municipalities have been doing for 20 years or more through their economic development functions?

VC: There are a number of differences. First of all, regional districts are usually too small to be actual economic regions, and they are most often operating in isolation from each other. The Okanagan is a good example: it’s split into three RDs and three Community Futures Development Corporations (CFDC) within one economic region, all of them with different, sometimes competing economic development strategies. It's even worse in the case of municipalities. They're often right beside each other, competing for the same things, not taking advantage of economies of scale or shared strategies.

Secondly, RDs and municipalities, with very few exceptions, work with a very limited set of tools. Their focus has been on marketing and business recruitment. These strategies do work well in regions that are growing or expanding. In regions whose economies are contracting, which is the case for many rural BC communities, these strategies work very poorly. In these cases the focus should be on business retention, expansion of opportunities based on existing assets, and new equity investment. Local governments’ economic development agencies are not practiced in these strategies, and they rarely hold any equity in anything, or act as front-end catalysts to clusters or economic sectors.

How we approach our natural resources is a good example. In Vernon we have a metal fabricating industry with the potential to grow: the training and the market conditions are very strong in the region; there are a lot of skills here, and lot of different metals available. But there is no local, sub-regional, or regional strategy to build on these assets. It's the same in the wood industry, whether in the Interior or on the Coast. Unfortunately, when it comes to the wood industry, the current provincial government has made it very clear that they don't want to see forestry as a tool for rural development. In fact, they've practically done the opposite. We are now living with the effects.

Communities and businesses involved in the forest or wood sector have been operating in a policy context that doesn't encourage local or regional solutions using forestry as an economic driver. This is based on an assumption that entrepreneurs will look after things, that they will create and embrace the opportunities. The consequence of following this assumption, however, is that we've seen the centralizing of capital, and a centralizing of control over the Annual Allowable Cut. This doesn't leave much room for community based development or even small business development. The opportunity and the complexity that a larger regional approach could address is lost because the current provincial government isn’t interested, and because of the limited sub-regional focus that municipalities, CFDCs, and RDs take in their economic development activities.

CIT: The long term impact of this is showing up in the recent proposal by Vancouver Island’s largest single landowner to turn large tracts of forest land into residential development.

VC: Yes, and that's exactly what happens. The idea of sustainable communities or sustainable incomes for individuals and families is lost to corporate agendas. It’s not new. It’s a pattern that rural communities in BC have experienced a number of times, based on the assumption that "revenue for large scale resource extraction enterprises in rural BC is good for rural residents." But this is looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope, where what is good for the major licensees, for example, is deemed to be good for rural communities. Unfortunately, this perspective fails to understand that when things aren't good for the licensee, the community or region begins to search for ways to 'make things better' for the licensee, rather than asking, 'What can we do to make things good for ourselves and our communities?'

You see this pattern around the world: short term thinking that ties the community or regional economic health to the welfare of a large corporate interest. It looks very good when the corporation arrives, generates employment, and spends. But it doesn't work when the corporation systematically eliminates employment or threatens to leave. These kinds of assumptions about economic development have, unfortunately, been at play in British Columbia for many decades.

CIT: This relates to your comments about local economic development strategies being guided by politicians who live and die by a 3 year election cycle, and that this doesn't match what it takes to do long term economic development. How long do successful rural economic development strategies generally take to unfold and benefit communities?

VC: Ideally, you've got to focus for at least a decade. Identifying opportunities, pulling together business plans, training people for skill sets that require more than a year of training - this is a 4-5 year process. To do a series of these, building on each other, a decade is the minimum. For example, the very successful Kentucky Highlands initiative has over 20, almost 30 years behind it. One of the basic assumptions about business start-ups is that it takes a 5-year time frame to become operational and show success. A regional economic development strategy would see start-ups building on each others' success. You start one up. Within 2-3 years it's beginning to have some kind of impact on the region. Then you launch another. This is a proven process. You can easily take a decade to see real results from this kind of strategy.

CIT: Are you seeing a willingness in BC to work at a larger regional scale?

VC: The beetle action committees in the Interior and the North are seeing the need for this kind of approach, in part because they've been operating on a broader regional level. But in general, there is a reluctance to understand and participate on the part of the provincial government. This is very unfortunate. Almost all of the other provinces are taking this broader regional approach, and they're starting to see some successes.

CIT: Are there any examples of BC communities and regions doing effective long term economic development without provincial participation?

VC: There are lots of bright lights. Which is both a strength and a weakness. It's a weakness because people look at very small, specific projects or business examples and say, 'There's a success.' But the magnitude isn't big enough. We're getting small drops in a large pool. The ripple effect is not big enough for these initiatives to connect for larger impact. Nevertheless, there are very good examples of small, individual projects having a limited larger effect. But unless they are in a bigger system, and they get the scale right, the impact of even these ripple effects is very small.

Kicking Horse Mountain Resort in Golden is an example. This was an idea and a concept from a small mountain community with a community ski hill. It was eventually bought by a larger consortium and turned intoKicking Horse Mountain Resort , which has now become a very large force in the local tourist economy. The community now has an extra plank in its economic system that they didn't have before. This involved a phenomenal amount of community effort and focus.

Another example of what can happen is Revelstoke's forest corporation . The magnitude of impact on the community and region isn't as large as the Golden example, as they harvest less than 10% of the local annual cut. Nevertheless, it's a good example of longer term community economic development and an approach to increasing the value of the natural resource before it leaves the region.

A third interesting project is taking shape in Quesnel around re-use or recycling of waste heat energy. They're just starting to work on a process that is expected to generate substantial benefits starting in late 2010 or 2011.

There are these small sub-regional economic strategies that, when implemented, have had or are having some positive impact. But the scale is limited.

CIT: What kind of impact are you seeing around the province as a result of the "Reversing the Tide" conference?

VC: The people I'm in contact with are far more aware of the issues I’ve been talking about, that these are common problems. They understand that we've got a system-wide, province-wide problem with time frame and lack of regional focus. Historically, the position in BC has been, 'We're doing what everybody else is doing.' But we're not. Other provinces are having far more success with their economic development initiatives.

One of the strengths of the conference was that it brought together some of the sub-regional groups in the North and the Cariboo/Chilcotin. They were in the same room, learning about the larger, regional nature of the problems and the opportunities that are affecting each of them individually. A number of these groups are gathering this Spring to follow up on what the conference raised. The conversation is going to be about how to bring together what we've learned to create large scale regional economic development in rural BC, instead of all acting independently, with each of us putting all of our energy into one-off projects and initiatives that can’t generate the required ripple-effect needed to build longer-term stability in rural communities in the province.


End of Part I: Learning from Reversing the Tide - In Conversation With Victor Cumming

The second part of the CIT interview with Victor Cumming will be published in the May 2009 issue of the CIT Information Resource. In Part II, Victor talks about how the market crisis and the need to address climate change are affecting how rural communities address economic development challenges.

For more information about Victor Cumming and his work, go to Westcoast CED.

©Real Estate Foundation of BC / 2009.
We encourage the reproduction of articles on this website non-profit educational purposes. Please notify the Foundation and the author of all reproductions, including in-house uses.