The Globe and Mail

With our forestry industry in decline, and our real estate boom losing its steam, B.C.'s economic health will increasingly depend on its creative and cultural industries. Up to now, Vancouver, Victoria and the Okanagan have been doing an amazing job in attracting the best and brightest from across Canada and around the world, new residents who bring their energy, ideas and risk-taking to invent things that never existed before: plays, software, fuel cells, urban developments, sculptures, process engineering, jazz solos, corporate logos, furniture, novels, cartoons, architecture, clothing designs, video games, and on and on. The artists, technicians and designers who invent these things want nothing more than to have lots of fellow creators around, because they know how one idea sparks another, in the unexpected ways that happen only in diverse cities. These generally young resident creators are intellectual capital in the purest sense, and far more important to growing B.C.'s wealth through the 21st century than all our pulp mills, strip malls or even oil drills heaped together.