Building A Stronger Economy in Medicine Hat

🏙️ Attracting Investment to Medicine Hat: Growth, Perception, and Community

Host Brian Konrad sits down with Al Sharma, Manager of Investment Attraction for the City of Medicine Hat, to unpack what it really takes to grow a local economy by attracting the right businesses and investors.

Al breaks down investment attraction in practical terms, comparing it to building a strong sports team, and explains why fit, timing, and long-term alignment matter just as much as incentives. The conversation also tackles the challenge of Medicine Hat being seen as a “forgotten corner,” and how relationship-building, visibility, and storytelling can change that narrative.

Topics include:

• What investment attraction actually means for smaller cities
• How relationships and trust drive economic growth
• Overcoming perception challenges on a national and global stage
• Why showcasing local strengths is essential for attracting business
• Lessons from agriculture and community-based industries

This episode offers valuable insight for business leaders, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and anyone interested in economic development and the future of Medicine Hat.

Chapters

00:00 Economic Development and Investment Attraction

07:08 Showcasing Medicine Hat's Strengths

12:37 Collaborative Efforts for Growth

18:16 Vision for the Future of Medicine Hat

👉 Whether you’re curious about local growth strategies or how communities compete for investment, this conversation brings clarity and optimism.

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Transcript

0:00

Hey, this is Brian again. And I'd like to ask you to do a favor. We can't do this work without people like you. So if you can, please, like, share, subscribe. Tell your friends about bring back the porch. If we were a hockey team and we needed more players. My job is to go and find those players in outside of Medicine Hat. See if they're a good fit and if they are. Showcase them our strengths, what we can do for them, how we can support their business, and to get them here to come and play on our team. This episode of Bring Back the Porch, brought to you by Bernie Leahy, River Street Realty. Let's get you home. And I'm pleased to welcome to the porch today, the manager of investment attraction for the City of Medicine Hat, Mr. Al Sharma, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Konrad. It is, an interesting title, and I was, thinking myself. Investment attraction sounds magnetic. What? What does it all entail? Well, the big idea, Konrad, is that. I mean, you've been a long time resident of, Medicine Hat. We trying to grow our economy at the end of the day. We want more jobs, more industry, just more players in our marketplace. So how do you go about doing that? It's a good question. So, there's, economic development. The whole, the whole process is under the umbrella of economic development. And within that, we have different things that we do, like workforce development, investment readiness, business retention and expansion and investment attraction, which is what I look after. So the simplest way to define my role is that if we were a hockey team and we needed more players. My job is to go and find those players in outside of Medicine Hat, see if they're a good fit and if they are, showcase them our strengths, what we can do for them, how we can support their business and to get them here to come and play on our team. Okay, so that's the explanation of invest. Simple explanation of invest. Of course, it's a lot more common. Yeah. But in big picture terms we are just trying to get the right kind of businesses to come and locate and grow in our city. I know in my professional as a journalist for many years, it was part of the process was building relationships and trust. Right. I'm sure that's probably the same thing for, when you're trying to promote the City of Medicine Hat. Exactly. So, you know, previous to this role, I used to work for the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, in Calgary. And I had provincial responsibility for the greenhouse sector. So within with an agriculture, we were all divided by by specialist areas. And, so when I was in that role and I looked at our huge province, it's hard for somebody sitting in that role to identify what's good where, what the Sturgeon County have, what is Edmonton have, what is Lethbridge have. And what I found is that the communities that had the highest profile that were well known and the ones that were doing a good job of making themselves known, would get the traction. So that was just the one piece. So having the assets but also showcasing the assets. The other part was the relationships which you alluded to. So you know, where are your friends. I mean you've been in business long enough. People want to do business with their friends. So I'd be sitting that in Calgary and go oh that guy is very good. He's up there in the North but he's very good at working with me because my clients feel better giving, giving them the services that they're looking for. So that is the, process of developing trust and building relationships. So I will start with a investor who knows nothing about medicine that in fact, I'll go to a conference. They don't even know where Alberta is. Oh, boy. So my role is to not only just to tell them, but also to match what they're looking for to what we have available. Because if the match is not good, nobody builds a factory for five years. You know, everybody builds for 50 years. So they need a lot of insurance. They need a lot of confidence that Medicine Hat can provide what they're looking for. And that's my. Role. Yeah, we hear and I've heard this so many times over my time in medicine that that this is the forgotten corner. I get so upset when I hear that. But I often wonder too, maybe that might be partly our responsibility, because, as you say, we haven't raised our profile as others have. You're absolutely right, Conrad. I mean, you know, when I go in, I travel a fair bit for the city. I go to conferences across the country. People are people. Others, you know, they have such a positive view. And especially when I talk to them about the fact that, you know, logistics strengths, the fact we have produce, you know, we have number one, producers of chickpeas and lentils. You know, if we got the biggest in greenhouse sector, we got see if we stuff you, we've got a carbon capture hub. We've got some solar happening now. We've got so many good things happening that people have. People are surprised the why aren't you the next, next best thing. And that's the gap. And that's exactly the gap that I'm talking about, is that we have tremendous potential, but we have to do a better job of showcasing that potential and matching that with the investment. And that's how we get economic developed. I'm wondering when you were on the other side, when you were outside of the city of Medicine Hat, did you know much about the city of medicine that did you have a perception of of what was here and how maybe has that changed now that you're on the inside? Yes. So so that's a really good question, because that's exactly my point, that I did not have a lot of good ideas and good knowledge about the region. You know. So for example, within the agricultural business it was leverage. Yes. That was done a very good job of showcasing themselves, building those connections and they're there better known. So you gravitate towards that. So before I came to Medicine Hat, I did not know enough about Medicine Hat. In fact, I've spent a lot of time learning about our people, our assets, the things we've gotten going, gotten going, and it's tremendous. So that's exactly what I'm talking about raising our profile, telling people who we are. So if I can share with you one example, one of the first things we did when I joined the department is we conducted tours and we call it opportunity. You probably. TAVR. Yes, opportunity. Yeah. It was, it was a play on words, but the idea was to come here and look at it because that's when people's, you know, people are inundated with information these days. It's an explosion of electronic data. And that's a weird different experience than coming here. I mean, I mean, this conversation on the porch, it's very different from knowing about that. There's a porch. So we got some 25 people from the industry. This was like in this, this is where the corporation where is can Global Affairs Canada, these are the people who are doing the business. And we came and we showcased them what we had. You know, we gave them a city tour. We had a presentation by the Premier, Daniel Smith, our MLA, as well. We had a social function with them. We took them around to meetings and to you've had and they were super impressed. I, you know, people say good things, but you can see in their eyes. And they said, wow, look at, look at what you've got going. And you're wonderful. In fact, one of the ladies said, hey, I'm looking for property here. Oh, I know realtor. I want to live here. Yeah. So you create that kind of impact once you get the people home and then, you know, we have to build on it, you know, one event and one, one tour is not enough. You have to reinforce that. You've got to keep knocking on the ground planting seeds. Right. Have any of those seeds taken root yet? Well, we've got lots of projects on the go. And some of them, of course, as you know, are protected by, confidentiality. So you can't spill the beans here. But we have lots we have lots and lots of, interest in our region. There's lots of people we're talking to. Investment attraction is not a quick process. As I said, people don't build factories for for, one year, five years. There's long term investment, and that takes time. It's a long game. It's a team game. So we're having those conversations. We're working very hard for for getting industry in. Yeah. It just takes time. And we're working on it. In just wondering oh wait you hear this all the time when they look at the stock market in business, they say that investment wants certainty. That's the what we hear all the time. And what are we certain about here in southeast Alberta? So again, as I said, we've got some wonderful assets. We are, 50km away from Canada's largest training center, Army Training Center. We have got DC there. These are very unique assets. Then we've got a drone industry. So, you know, we've got an established base. And when you have an established base, it it creates that certainty. Right. We are our own unique, energy grid. So the fact that we generate 280MW of our own power generation, we are owned by ourselves. That's certainty. And that's long term. We have an exemption from the provincial government. That's not going to change the fact that we can deliver on low energy rates. That's a big advantage. The other one that we're working on is our carbon capture hub. So with the, you know, with the changing carbon footprint in the world, every company is looking at what I'm going to do with my carbon. Do I want to pay those high carbon taxes? Do I want to run after credits, or do I go in an area which provides me a facility to sequester my carbon permanently and safely? So all these things give us permanency and the fact that we have industries like, you know, the petrochemical industry that's been around here forever, methane, can carb all these businesses are a reflection of that certainty that we are a good environment to, keep in sustain business. How do we elevate our visibility? I know you said you've gone to conferences and things like that, but is there more that we could be doing and maybe utilizing tools like social media and things like that, mouth to mouth getting ambassadors who will call, person in Toronto that they know and say, hey, you know, did you know about such and such and just sort of, you know, spread the tentacles out as far as you can? As I said, it's not a one man sport. It's a team game. And some of the names that you mentioned, people who've come here and talked on the porch like medicine, had college, like Tourism Alberta, all these people are in within that climate, you know, they're within that environment where they're engaging with others. So these are kind of the big pieces, the businesses that are here already, they go and talk to other businesses. So it's just not one person who's going to conference and trying to promote this. Of course, we are trying to do that. But when we do events like the ICC conference, we go with a team and everybody brings their own set of expertise, their own knowledge, their own appeal, their own connections, their own contacts, and that's what makes us expand. That was in Whistler, BC here recently, a conference I understand, that brings lots of people who are looking to invest in various areas together. So you get them all under one roof. Right? So the at the ICC, which is the National Council of Shopping Centers, it's a worldwide organization. It's in 100 countries. There's about 70,000 members. And they conduct these conferences all over the world Atlanta, Los Las Vegas, New York, Toronto and the one in Western Canada in Whistler, BC. So looking at simply if you want to make a real estate dish, you go to the superstore offices because they've got all the ingredients there. So the developers, you know, the real estate agents, the architects, franchisees like, you know, I met with, did it Queen, Great Clips. So all those people are there and it's a great, deal making conference. So I went there last year as a single person the first time exploring what it's about, and I was I love the energy. So one of the things I want to talk about is energy, which is which is a. City with energy. And the energy to grow. So at the ICC conference I went to last year by myself, and then I came and talked to our, Chamber of Commerce. The other room got interested, so we had Meadowlands, we had, Box Springs, we had the city land department, myself and the Chamber of Commerce jointly participate. We got a booth. There's five of us. So it's a team. It's a team approach. You make more contacts, you have different perspectives. So it was a very successful event. And it's the thing of it's the thing. But we were talking about partnership, government, city and private sector. How can we work together because our objective is the same. How can, ordinary people in medicine that help? We're all on the same team here. And I came here and I lived downtown hotel and had a lot of time, walking around and talking to people. I just started to get a sense of what is the city about? What are the people about? What is the what is the culture? This is the question I asked myself. What is the Medicine Hat culture. And you know, it's a bit of a, it's a bit of you know, what's the word for it, a bit down on ourselves. Yeah. We're a bit down on ourselves. We can be our own worst enemy sometimes and. And that's we want the opposite. We want the optimism. We want the energy because the energy creates energy. If I go and talk enthusiastically about something, people get interested. But if I go and talk the other way around. Yeah. So that's what ordinary people can do. Like this. This is a corner of opportunity. This is not a missed opportunity. This is a corner of opportunity. It's our own real estate. These are our own children. We want them to stay here to get jobs here. This is our own economy. You know, that sense of ownership that we don't need to push to push that others, you know it's our city. And that sense and that optimism and that energy. You know like we did a survey and some 80 something about 80% of people said that the rehab leaving here. Oh yeah. So that communication of that that message. That I was going to say when we were having a similar conversation with Mayor Clarke, back in December, I told her, I said the slogan for the City of medicine should be you can live better in Medicine Hat. And she got up and wrote it on the board in her office. So I hope that maybe that might be my contribution to to helping, promote our city, the city that we all love. Absolutely. How is the Sam Solar project going to fit into your plans? We were hearing lots of talk at council about it is an opportunity and investment opportunity and economic opportunity. So are you taking that ball and running with it? Absolutely. So. So as I said, the carbon Capture Hub and Sam is they are very high interest to, to the business community because green energy is a big thing. Everybody knows that the carbon tax is here. It's probably going to be more intensive in the long run. So generating electricity from a, a natural source is a big plus. So as you know, we've got the, approval condition to a PPA for the 75MW first phase at 131 million. And that's a very good start. So we're talking to companies who are interested in that kind of power and who want to partner with us and want to work with us in, in expanding that business. So there's lots of interest of we're talking to companies again, it takes time. We have to make sure that they're happy with what they're getting as as well as we're happy with we're getting that process underway. And I think again, it's, it's going to be great for the city. When you look in your crystal ball five years from now, what do you see medicine that looking at compared to where we are today? I know that's a hard question, but, you know, with the balls that you have in motion right now, if everything, falls in place, how will our city be different? It starts with the vision. They know when you when you come to a place. What vision do you have for the city? And again, as I said, that because we have so, so many good assets, you know, we're well connected logistically. You know, we have a thriving agricultural environment. I see us as being an industrial town. Not and just not just on the business side. But I'll give you another example. The people say that we have too many seniors and, but there's demand for that. There's seniors, seniors homes them. Look at what Florida has done. They've converted themselves. They've taken something that people would think is not so positive into a great positive. So more seniors home, maybe more industry, more business. I think it is coming. And I think it will come. And once that comes, they we always say activity creates activity. I lived in Calgary for over 30 years and for the longest time it was all oil and gas. And you know, what have we? But once the ball got rolling, it just kept rolling and rolling. And because growth attracts growth. Now when you have an offering of everything people will say okay we want to locate here because we're getting all the facilities and the services and that's the cusp we're in. I think we're at a turning point. You know the inflection point where we're pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. It's very, very hard. This is probably the toughest word. But once we put a big brick in place then the building starts and accelerates. During the last election campaign, that was one of the keys that people were saying that we need jobs here in Medicine Hat so that our children don't have to go somewhere else to find employment, to find a career. And it starts and stays here in Medicine Hat. So. Well, let's keep our fingers crossed and, hope that you are successful in attracting investment to Medicine Hat. Thank you so much, Konrad. And I hope that we are successful. Well, because it's it's quite an audience now. So hopefully somebody out there is calling Alison. I, I'll have to take a look at that. And, who knows where this seed will go. I'll try to thank you for the visit. Thank you so much, Konrad.