Today marks 1 year since BCA officially launched as a public organization. As we reflected on this, the overwhelming theme was gratitude. On behalf of myself, our Board, our membership and our staff, I want to say:
- Thank you to the governments, elected officials and bureaucrats, who have welcomed this Council, invited our ideas and worked with us to help make life better.
- Thank you to the communities of Alberta who have engaged with us from Fort Chipewyan to Lethbridge, and many in between.
- Thank you to the supporters and friends, non-profits, think tanks and business councils across the country who have partnered with us and advised us.
- Thank you to our media partners, who have welcomed a new voice and a new message on the Canadian business landscape.
- Thank you to the people of Alberta who have put their faith in the province’s leading businesses and entrepreneurs to drive their shared prosperity.
- Thank you to our members who founded this organization in its first year, believing in the idea of a different kind of business group with a focus on making life better for Albertans.
Our Council is strong, growing and influential—and it’s because of you, our community.
This year we’ve influenced policies that help people. People like farmers, truckers, tech workers and energy workers. We engaged people and governments across this province and across this country, often with a simple question to start: “How can we help make life better?” And that message is getting noticed.
This year may have been among the most challenging our businesses have ever seen, and yet we are more optimistic than ever, more confident than ever, that the future of this province is brighter than the past. I think history will show that this Council was founded at the perfect hour—to be there for the province of Alberta during a time of crisis and now recovery, when we need government, business and people working together with the famous Albertan entrepreneurial spirit.
We believe that the period we are in now will shape our future. We face another challenge; another trial; another opportunity. We have come far together. And there is much more to be done. This is more than a recovery. This is another chance to show the world that Alberta is just getting started.
Thank you for helping shape the future of this great province.
Adam Legge
President, Business Council of Alberta