
Benjamin Tal, Deputy Chief Economist CIBC Capital Markets
The recession we're seeing as a result of COVID-19 is primarily a "service industry" recession, which suggests when the turnaround comes, it will come quickly, because the demand for services will be extremely high, and because it is easier to open a restaurant than open a new manufacturing plant (as an example). Service-based businesses can generally get up and running faster than product-based businesses. Household income is rising during a recession for the first time ever. The Canadian government is spending A LOT.




Lynette Tremblay, Vice President - Strategy & Innovation, Edmonton Global
"I've seen a lot of hardship and loss of the past year, but also a lot of achievements." Over 4000 new business started in our region last year; a UofA researcher was awarded the Nobel Prize; 5 people from our region received the Order of Canada; two local tech companies - Drivewyze and Jobber - each raised over $70million in growth funding; and, another local company Tevosol won the NASA iTech competition - they created a technology that preserves donor organs for a long period of time. That's a tremendous amount of innovation coming from our region. The global economy has been transforming creating new challenges and opportunities. The global economy has been transforming from being based on tangible products to the knowledge economy. The value of intangible assets has far outpaced the value of tangible assets. This phenomenon marked the beginning of the 4th industrial revolution.

Tom Shearer, Chair, REALTORS® Association of Edmonton
Forecasting is very difficult and inaccurate, but we're going to try again. We expect consumer confidence to remain strong, but there is a high degree of uncertainty and we are taking a conservative approach in our projections. There wasn't much context or rationale given for the projections given by the Association, these charts summarize their comments:

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