I’ll make an admission. A few months ago I was feeling kind of smug about living on the Sunshine Coast. Call it naive — because it was — but I believed the economists who said Canada was somewhat insulated from the economic fallout from America. And, if that was so, then the Sunshine Coast was surely even better off. True, we couldn’t hide from fuel prices or the rising cost of Chilean oranges but I kind of thought our micro-economy of construction, resource extraction and tourism was robust enough that we’d continue to be able to afford a new and bigger flat screen every year. But it turns out we’re not an island after all. Suddenly I’ve started hearing the "L" word a lot more lately. Layoffs. For a nice little while now, anybody with a nail belt had work. The real estate industry was booming. It fuelled a construction industry that in turn filtered down through the rest of the community. Developers happily threw money at various local charity projects. People ate, and drank, out. Times were good. But it’s quite possible those greedy bankers in America burst our happy little real estate bubble. If so, it means we’re once again faced with the possibility that we live in an area without an anchor industry. Logging has always been a mainstay around here but it’s been hit pretty hard in the last year or so. And there’s a lot of new looking heavy equipment out there that’s going to be sitting idle more than its owners had hoped. You might say there’s still a healthy "retirement economy" as the boomers age but that may not be so either. Many approaching retirement just got a jolt when 30 to 40 per cent of the value of their RRSPs disappeared. Their real estate holdings just took a dip too, making them less likely to be in the mood to upgrade their homes or buy a second property. But you know what industry is looking good these days? Commercial fishing! Halibut, salmon, prawns, herring and cod prices are all relatively stable and enjoying a bull market. Anyone who’s well diversified in the industry just had a pretty good year. Fishermen can once again walk around town with their heads high, happy in the knowledge that the New Year will bring eager deckhands. I know a deckhand who just made four months worth of construction cash in three weeks of halibut fishing. If this cycle continues, maybe we’ll even see the fishermen buy back the waterfront and rebuild the netsheds that have all but disappeared around Pender Harbour. For the rest of us, I think it’s important to heed the advice of the experts. Business and financial gurus all agree there’s only one way to ride out this down turn: Advertise.
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