Economic Ecosystems with guest expert Dallas Gislason

What exactly is an economic ecosystem, and could it be the key to creating stronger communities, more competitive regions, and long-term prosperity across Saskatchewan?

In this episode of Paths to Prosperity, host Crystal Froese sits down with Dallas Gislason, Executive Director of the South Island Prosperity Partnership (SIPP), one of Canada's leading regional economic alliances. Under Dallas's leadership, SIPP has helped launch COAST, Pacific Canada's leading ocean economy hub, creating more than 500 direct jobs and establishing Blue Action Canada, the country's first dedicated ocean-tech accelerator. SIPP has also advanced economic reconciliation through the Indigenous Prosperity Centre, supporting Indigenous-led economic development and building stronger regional partnerships.

Together, they explore how Saskatchewan can build its own unique economic ecosystem—one that strengthens regional collaboration, boosts competitiveness, and creates lasting prosperity for communities across the province. 

Paths to Prosperity is a platform for exploring how communities can build resilient, inclusive, and future‑ready economies.

Through thought leadership, practical insights, and conversations with leaders from across Saskatchewan and beyond, Paths to Prosperity examines the forces shaping local and regional economies—and the choices communities can make to navigate change with confidence.

Our focus is on what works, what’s emerging, and what leaders should be thinking about now.

To go deeper on the ideas shaping Saskatchewan’s future, https://seda.ca/about/paths-to-prosperity/ for more podcasts, thought leadership, and resources from the Saskatchewan Economic Development Alliance. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Pastor Prosperity, the podcast of Saskatchewan Economic Development Alliance. I'm Crystal Froh. On this podcast, we explore ideas, partnerships, and leaderships shaping stronger for communities. And today, we're diving into one of the most important concepts shaping the future of economic development. Economic ecosystems. While the term might be coming more common, what does it actually mean and how can communities intentionally build one? To answer those questions, today I'm going to be joined by one of Canada's leading voices on the topic. Dallas Gistleton. He's the executive director of the Stealth Island Prosperity Partnership. And for more than 20 years, Dallas has been helping communities build stronger regional economies through collaboration, innovation, and shared leadership. Under his leadership, the Stealth Island Prosperity Partnership has become one of Canada's leading regional economic alliances. The organization helped launch Coast Pacific Canada's leading ocean economy providers, supporting the creation of more than 500 direct jobs and establishing Blue Action Canada, the country's first dedicated ocean tech accelerator. They've also advanced economic reconciliation through the creation of the Indigenous Prosperity Center, which supports Indigenous-led economic and growth to self-down Indigenous Business Directory Center, and host events like the Indigenous Youth Economic Conference. Dallas holds a Master of Global Management from Royal Roads University, a Graduate Certificate of Economic Development from the University of Waterloo, and professional certifications in business retention and expansive industry cluster facilitation and organizational performance. We are going to tackle a lot in this conversation. So sit back and let's jump right in to my discussion with Dallas as we explore what economic ecosystems are and why they matter and what Saskatchewan can learn from regions that are intentionally building. Welcome, Dallas. I am so excited to be able to have a great conversation with you here today. Let's just start off with the real simple explanation for our listeners. When we talk about an economic ecosystem, like in ordinary plain language, what does that actually mean?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yeah, it's a great question. And again, so first of all, just thanks for thanks for having me, inviting me on and to Verona and Cita. And I'm from Saskatchewan, so it's a pleasure to speak to you speak to you today. Yeah, so I guess an economic ecosystem, to me, I guess the simplest way to think about it is the difference between a region, regional economy, which is more about like behavior and commuter sheds and stuff like that, and an ecosystem, which is, if you, if you use the literal definition of ecosystem from nature, where you have, you know, uh think about like a forest with like big trees and small shrubs and like fungi and and a stream and a water source and like all these different types of things that create this symbiosis together and the feed off each other to make each other thrive, right? So an economic ecosystem is just that. It's a the idea that you have, say, like a large employer or a major driving industry sector, and then you have a main street and a and retail and the secondary, tertiary type of industries, and both of those things are needed to actually create an ecosystem. And then to add to that is you think about all of the different partners and roles that can be played in nurturing that ecosystem. And those partners and organizations are all part of that ecosystem. So things like banks and financial institutions or private capital investment or you know, like economic development organizations or municipal governments or all levels of government, right? You could have First Nations governments involved, and you can have provincial ministries or programming involved, and then you could have specialized banks like like FCC or Business Development Bank or EDC, et cetera. And all of those partners all to come together to create this ecosystem play, if you will, of symbiosis.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

It's like it's kind of like the like the ingredient, but the more important thing than just having the right players, it's about connecting them and aligning them.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Yeah, exactly. So if so, like another way to think of it too is if if an ecosystem, if you just like in nature, if you take out one of the ingredients in that healthy ecosystem, then the whole ecosystem starts to to collapse, right? And there's that famous fable about the Yellowstone Park where they where they went in and killed all the wolves, and then all of a sudden you had like an overrun of the other animals that were like literally changing the health of the environment, and then they added the wolves back in, and it literally changed the ecosystem and created this equilibrium, if you will. And that's not unlike how economic ecosystems work, is that you know you have the larger employers, and sometimes in in economic development is we tend to chase after these like big sort of we call call it smokes, smoke stack chasing, when really the existing employers are are part of the health of where the ecosystem is today, and making sure that we're nurturing the workforce and and providing the capital and and the other inputs that those existing ecosystem partners need to thrive at all levels, right? Small retail all the way up.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah, so it that's a great, a great illustration. So talking about the word nurture, because you don't you don't often think about nurture in the context of economic growth and that. So how important would be sharing the data and maybe trust and governance will just make the ecosystem actually function right down the nitty-gritty of how that actually looks.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, I get asked this question a lot because obviously I work in a regional alliance model in economic development here in BC. And sometimes people ask the question is like, hey, why do we even need this thing to exist? Like, why do this work and this mandate and run these programs and stuff? And I try to turn that back on in on the opposite way, which is to think of what happens if we just decided not to nurture the economy at all. And the economy is this, is this uh force, like this invisible force, it just sort of happens. There's human behavior, there's commerce, there's people spending money and buying things, and and that just stuff just all happens anyways. And so the question is why nurture it? I I talked to our stakeholders about this, is that if if you think about an economy, how it functions today, is you want to look at sort of a future vision state for like what would an ideal economy look like in things that you could think about like an inclusive economy and wealth distribution and good paying jobs and good career entry points and then pipelines that give people uh career advancement opportunities and all those things. And those things don't necessarily happen without proper support and nurturing, right? And so that's where we enter in this sort of idea of economic development and the idea of an intervention is you're saying, like, think of the economy as this giant, you know, this giant ship that just is steaming ahead, right? And an economic development agenda is like slowly steering that ship toward the vision and the values and the types of things that we want to see more of in the economy based on our own strengths, our own assets, our own value system in wherever we are living. It could be a small village or a municipal place, it could be a large metropolitan region. Doesn't really matter as long as the the you know you're trying to steer the economy in that direction that you want to go. And to do that, you know, requires policies that that align to those values. It requires programming, it requires the other partners like the capital and all the ecosystem partners that we mentioned, and trying to get all of those partners to align around what's this common vision, because then you're all part of steering that ship, right? It's not just one captain that makes all the shots. You're all saying, like, hey, if we do this collaboratively, we can actually steer that ship in a way that's more effective and efficient over time.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

That's a great segue into the next really challenging question. You know, the South Island Prosperity Partnership, you guys have been in the works for over a decade. So lots of experience there. And so, how do you get multiple municipalities aligned when they each have their own agendas and maybe their own strategies? How how do you actually get those to come together?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yeah, it's not an easy endeavor, that's for sure. I wish there was an easy answer where you could just like, hey, if you do this, this, and this, everyone will collaborate. Never works that way. But I guess the starting point for me is to think of you know, what's the proper organizing unit in and of itself for an economy? And I think that's the place where we started here in this in the South Islands. So we're at the region of Greater Victoria, which a lot of people who aren't from here, they think of like, oh, it's Victoria. Victoria is Victoria. But it's actually a region of 22 local governments. So we have 13 municipalities and we have nine First Nations within a metropolitan area of about 400,000 people. And the reason that that's important is that if you look at Stats Canada definition of a metropolitan area or a CMA in Canada, what they're looking at is it's actually the commuter shed. So they're looking at like the spatial relationship between where people live and where they derive their income. And it just happens that the Greater Victoria metropolitan area is a place where people live in one municipality and they might commute and work in another municipality. And so I remember actually years ago when I was working in Saskatchewan, we did some work with this academic named Dr. Mark Partridge, who was at U of S back then, but I think now he's at the University of Ohio, I think. Anyway, he had this criteria where he said, like, you can actually look at your regional economy through this criteria. And there's four criteria. And one of them is what I just mentioned, it's the commuter shed. It's that geographical relationship between where you live and where you drive your income. And then you said there's this other one where it's based on human behavior. So that's sort of where do you buy your groceries, where do you buy a pair of shoes, where do you go for dinner on date night? Where do you take your kids to daycare? Where do you go ride your bike or kayaking or whatever? So that's human behavior type stuff. And that's there's a geography around that. And the third one is around sort of the trade pattern. It's sort of like where do businesses, where's that B2B relationship happen? Where's the supplier for the manufacturing facility or whatnot, right? And then the fourth one is what he described as like this natural geography that keeps this, that sort of creates this container for this stuff to happen in. And I happen to live on an island, and so there's a natural connection where people sort of like you hit the water and you're like, okay, well, I can't buy my groceries in in Port Angeles across the border. I'm gonna turn around, right? Like there's just like this natural, since sometimes it's rivers, sometimes it's mountains, sometimes it's an international border. Like I grew up in southwest Saskatchewan, where you know, there's the Montana border right there, right? And so if you apply those four criteria, that's sort of the starting point when we what we did is we said, like, hey, you might be this one municipality in this little part of our metropolitan area, but the way that the economy works is in this broader way where people, it's all more much more fluid, right? And that was the starting point we had is like, hey, when you want to talk about economic interventions and you want to drive the economy, create the wealth that comes into a region, you need to think of that in a broader way. And then, yeah, there's still the main street economy, there's still the commercial tax base, there's all the stuff that the municipality has their own control of in their own jurisdiction. And that stuff's just as important as well, because ideally, you want to try to align the values of that together. And so we have sort of invited them all into that process and and had them lead a lot. So that, for example, our constitution through the Self-Inland Prosperity Partnership was designed by municipal leaders. So they wrote the bullet points in there. There's eight bullet points, and it took multiple meetings and many hours to do, and a facilitator, right? Because you people are like, oh, I don't like this word here. And and and that was sort of like a way for us to say, like, wait, we want this thing to reflect your values. Like you ran for office to make your community better. Here's how, here's how and why we're, we're, we're doing that. And then the other thing we did as a next step to that is we looked at all their official community plans. So all the existing strategies that they had already existing, they're whether they're formal or you know, like a position paper or an economic development roadmap, whatever they were. And then we gathered all that stuff together and created an alignment document. And then we went back to them and said, Hey, here's all the stuff that you guys all already all agree on, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

We don't denominators.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah. Shared assets, right? Is a is a great way to collaborate. So in our region, for example, we have we're the home of Canada's Pacific Navy. That that Navy base is in the township of a spymalt. So it's in one municipality, but that Navy base is huge. They employ 7,000 people around the region. And so that's a shared asset. We can go to all the other municipalities and say, hey, I know it's in a spy malt. So they're they're the ones sort of nurturing the pavement and the potholes around it or whatever, but it's a shared asset that we can all agree that is part of our our regional economy. And there's many other examples all over Saskatchewan, example, for example.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Well, that's great because having you've been a person who's lived in Saskatchewan and now you're away. And I know I know what this is like too, having lived in British Columbia for 15 years and then coming back and looking at my province and seeing all the different things that are going on and and that. But from your experience, when you're looking at Saskatchewan, you know, do you think we have functioning ecosystems or are we still operating like totally more independently?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Yeah, I mean, one thing that's very apparent in Saskatchewan is there are a lot of municipalities. So like the RMs and the and the urb and the urban municipalities. BC, I think, has 170 in total with relatively the same land mass, right? And so the it is a different type of environment where you are looking at, you know, what you might call a fractured governance type of situation. However, that's not to say that those municipalities can't come together around different different, let's call it like levels of regional governance around these types of ecosystems, right? And the way that I would think about it is like each one of those municipalities has their own purview of whether it's an urban municipality that has a, you know, like a town and a and a built environment and a commercial land base and a main street and and you know a tax base around that. But the where the sort of the wealth drivers are coming from are usually probably happening at a at a larger scale, right? Like a resource industry or a, you know, a value-added, you know, processing facility or something that's down the road that may is is most likely not in their municipality. And so I think of it like that is like if you think about an ecosystem, it's sort of the scale of it changes depending on the type of sector that you're talking about. And I'll use an example just from our backyard is I remember talking to a CEO of an air an aerospace company. Actually, so we build the De Havlen twin otter here in in the Victoria area. And the CEO of that company at the time said, like, because we were talking about, hey, is there like an opportunity to do an aerospace cluster in Victoria where, you know, we have the flight school and we have this manufacturing facility and they have some suppliers. And what he said to me actually, I think about this a lot, is he said, he said, our scale of our company is is so much is so large that our our geographic or like our geography where we get our supplies is like maybe Western Canada at the smallest level. Like he's like, we get our flight, some of our flight components from Florida. You know, it's a it's a global distributed value chain model in the in the aerospace industry. And so he's like, there's not really a cluster here. Like you can do workforce development and you can do some of the more, some of the more, you know, checks in a box within the aerospace industry, but the scale of it is much like you need to collaborate all across Canada to make the aerospace industry a function. And then, you know, on the flip side of that is you have some of the industries that are that are much more niche and small, right? Like a like a bunch of berry producers that are collaborating around, you know, like a you know, creating a supply agreement with a with like a larger, like a federated co-op in Saskatchewan, I guess, would be a good example, where you know it takes multiple producers to like create a supply agreement. And so the the scale sort of goes up and down depending on the on the type of sector. And I think in Saskatchewan is that, you know, every every region in Saskatchewan has their own set of of assets and strengths, and and to organize around those and build an ecosystem around those is to me is totally possible. It just means thinking creatively too about some of where some of the inputs may come from like Regina or Saskatoon. And so they those partners are are need to be invited into your ecosystem rather than just looking at what you have in your backyard.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

The would you say some of the gaps that we have then is just not sharing that information or the lack of data across those industries to have a greater kind of feel for our own identity, maybe?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, I think I think so. I think there's like one of the things I've been thinking about lately to uh as well is like what are the what are the collaborative governance models themselves that that lend that that sort of like allow you to be creative and flexible with these things. So rather than thinking about like, oh, well, I want to build a, I know, like this happened in my hometown in Shonovan. They wanted to build an ethanol plant, for example. Well, yeah, an ethanol plant is a big scaled facility, right? You need economies of scale to make something like that come to come to fruition. And therefore, you need to have a broader set of partners rather than just say one municipality or a couple of municipalities to think much broader. And and to do that, you need a governance model that aligns, that allows you to do that, right? So you hit so shared costs, but also shared tax revenue, right? So the facility itself might be in municipality A and the municipality, you know, B, C, D, and E have an agreement to service that facility, that then they also get the tax revenue shared back with them down the line. So that so that's just you know, it's it's creative governance models, I think, is a is a way. And that with that comes the shared strategy, the assets analysis, you know, looking at your asset base and sharing information and and sort of what's the vehicle for those partners that may have never collaborated before to actually come together and explore those opportunities. And that's I think what what groups like CEDA uh you know offer, right? It's like a venue to come, you know, that there's no no political bias, there's no sector-specific bias. You're just coming and saying, like, hey, come and have the conversation and then take it from there.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah, and and that's exactly it. And you know, we do have strong collaboration absolutely in our province, but it it's I think kind of one of the questions that we definitely want to answer through this is like what's the one thing that's missing that would help us bring those together? Sort of you almost need like the one kind of catalyst to sort of spark things and get them forward. In your experience, what what do you think that could be?

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah, that's a it's such a good question because it's it it varies, I think, depending on location and context and all that kind of stuff, right? And I don't want to I don't want to be in this chair of like, hey, I grew up in Saskatchewan, I haven't lived there for for about 16 years, and so the context, I'm missing a lot of the context. But I'd say one of the things that I hear when I when I'm working in community, the community neighborhood levels, community levels, is they often jump right to capital. And they'll say, Oh, yeah, you know, we can't, we'd love to do, you know, this and this and this, but we don't have the capital to do it. And to me, it's it's very common to do that. But I think the uh the the response that I often have is is always take a an asset-based lens on this from the starting point rather than looking at like, oh, well, we wanted to do, you know, this big project, but you know, the capital isn't there. Is I always think like, okay, well, what do you have then? Right. Like, start with the assets that you do have, and there's lots of them already. And and I I know this from growing up in the prairie region, is that they're the most in industrious human ingenuity people on earth because they create stuff out of nothing. Literally, the entire province of Saskatchewan was like just just a bare grassland, right? And so these communities literally created everything you could see, including the trees where I'm from, but everything came from from nothing, and including the cooperative movement in and of itself, where they said, hey, we don't have a bank in our in our small town, so let's just create it ourselves, right? And that's where the the co-op and the criterions came from, right? And so I think that's that's the approach that we need to sort of get back to is that what's the missing thing, the missing ingredient, I think, is the venue just to come together and have the have some of these conversations. And then I think the the thing I mentioned earlier, it's just sort of like there's a whole new world emerging around community wealth building models and organizing models and capital stacks and community investment co-ops, and like there's all these vehicles that are emerging that allow the the whatever the ideas to happen. And rather, so rather than jumping to the to the capital, like happens time and time again, is like have the have the conversation of the assets and the shared vision first, and then look at like, hey, now we have all these different options that we can use to actually raise the capital. Maybe the capital doesn't exist for it, but now we have all these emerging community wealth building models and investment co-ops, and there's just all these different creative ways of getting the capital around the good idea once it's formed.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

So I guess the idea of you know, each individual municipality or town or village might have their own strategy and have a greater understanding of themselves and their own identity, but getting them to operate into an ecosystem of like what you said, of where they're actually going down the road and saying, here's what we have, what do you have? Like, how do you get that conversation going?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah, and that's I think so. Something I said earlier where it's like the what's the right scale of that aligns to the opportunity that we're talking about? Like, you know, there's the main street economy that that's sort of like very insular to the municipality, and they can invest in their own placemaking and beautification and place marketing and things like that. But it's uh when you get to that next level where you're like, oh, we want to, you know, expand our our value-added production facilities or something like that, where where you want to start building that ecosystem at a broader level. I think one one thing that I noticed too when I, because I grew up in I grew up on a farm in a in a small town in Saskatchewan. And there was always this mentality of like, you know, they would refer to Regina as this like distant place where like the they're sort of like the adversary. Like the government is like against us somehow, and we're and we need to like do it ourselves to to to sort of survive despite the the policymakers and stuff. And I think the You know, what I've noticed is that we need to we need to flip that a around a little bit and think about like, okay, government may not give you everything you want, but they are a partner. They are part of the ecosystem. And you want to have advocacy for policies that that uh that allow your your your vision to happen. You want them to come to the table as you know, funders or investors or even on the infrastructure side, the enabling infrastructure. You want their programs around whether it's you know funding agriculture initiatives or studies or feasibility stuff. And so to see them as part of the ecosystem, even though, yeah, like I grew up four hours driving time away from Regina, rather than seeing them as adversary, see them as part of the of the solution and then scale that like that's the provincial level, and then scale that back to the regional level, is that a lot of the sm a lot of the small towns don't have the economies of scale to, like I said, I taught the with the example of the the ethanol plans. There's no the you know, they don't have the the economies of scale to make stuff like that happen. And so you need to broaden that ecosystem and invite the capital partners from an hour away that that could could play those those roles. And the capital investors as well, right? Like the capital, capital is very, especially in the last three or four decades, capital is very fluid in terms of it'll flow toward ideas no matter where they are on Earth. And you're seeing a bit of a counter to that now where you're seeing people more like, oh, we want to localize our capital and have more control over our our assets and and invest you know closer to home and all that kind of stuff. But that's the that's where the creative capital stacks come in, right? Is you can have a local investment model and then invite the the other capital as the as like the last 20% or something, right? That enables the project, it gets you over that tipping point and enables the project to happen. But yeah, in terms of like what's the first step on this, is I think it's it's sort of just the that awareness of of um that gets the creative juices flowing between and among municipal partners and and other partners, you know, chambers of commerce and and economic development leaders and stuff that that uh that exist across broader geographies and and and and you know, giving them the venue, places like the CETA events and stuff like that, where they have this venue to come and just sort of like, hey, let's brainstorm ideas and and bring your asset map and your and your uh your SWOT analysis to those tables and say, like, hey, here's where's all the shared assets that we have that we can actually start to assemble. And of course, like as you mentioned before, uh Crystal, like the the gaps as well, right? Like, hey, we have this, this, and this, but we're missing this this fourth ingredient, and then your neighboring jurisdiction or municipality down the road may have that missing ingredient that that could form that more ecosystem, that more cohesive ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Shifting from the competition idea that we're competing against, you know, our towns, our villages, even against our own government, and looking towards the collaboration and utilizing the resources that we have that government offers, because you know, they are economic development drivers as well. They want the whole province to succeed. And and then as you said, like sharing the data, sharing your identity, your strat plans with your area that's kind of moves us out of the competition and into the collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Absolutely. Yeah. I've I've had the pleasure in my career to do several well on several occasions to work in in China. And the reason I bring that up is China is doing things at such a massive scale that it's it's even impossible to describe until you see the type of scale that we're talking about. And when I when I reflect on like my upbringing in Saskatchewan, is that like our the the entire province of Saskatchewan is only, you know, a million plus people, right? Like the the scale of of our competitors are worldwide, right? So so when we think we need to think a bit bigger, and and to do that requires, yeah, like you can compete in in some areas, like like yeah, I grew up playing hockey, right? Yeah, your competitors on some th some uh realms, right? But uh, but when it comes to the economic prosperity of the province, like we're competing against the world. And you know, same in BC, we always say that as well as like our competitor is not an I'm all like 100 kilometers up the up the island. It's a global world that and everyone's at everyone's trying to attract talent, they're trying to attract capital. We're trying to attract doctors right now in in on the island. I think we're the oldest municipality in or metropolitan area in Canada. So we need lots more healthcare. Yeah, yeah. So so like that's the that's the type of uh stuff we're competing for. And so therefore, let's collaborate around attracting those things to our to our region. Yeah, they might not land in the in my neighborhood, but it'll it'll land somewhere and and you know, sort of we're all in in that together. And that's how I think Saskatchewan and and they've demonstrated that so many, so many times in the past, right? Like just the the the cooperation models and the and the you know, the credit union model and the barn raising and the you know, like I remember when I was a kid, our neighbor, there they had a house fire. And like seriously within three or four days, like all the community came together and all the kids had like new toys and new clothes and stuff because their stuff was all damaged. And that's just that's the that's the it's already in our spirit, right? In in as prairies in the prairies. And so let's just expand that a little a little bit bigger and when it comes to economic development and collaborate around ecosystems. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Yeah, doing it intentionally instead of oh, I don't want to say by accident, but you know, I think anytime you put a str strategic plan together with intention, you're more likely to get further faster than you are to just sort of fall into opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

And it has to be deliberate because the the collaboration is is i like to do this at a at the at these types of scales is very hard, right? Because it's easier to default into our our day-to-day and just go to go to the council meeting, go to, you know, get the task list done this month, that kind of stuff. And so this bigger picture stuff is is much more difficult. Um that's why I always tell people like start start off with the assets and like because you get into these rooms where like I had recently where we were planning an agriculture economic development plan, and it was probably like 70% of the meeting was talking about the the negative stuff, like, oh, we can't do this, we're missing this, you know, to do this and this requires so much investment that you know we can't do that. And and it was just at the end, we're like, okay, let's let's just turn our our let's turn that switch off for a moment and and like let's assemble the assets. Like we have tons of assets in this space. And then once we get all that organized, we can we can then say, okay, well, here's some gaps that we need to fill because we've already built this this beautiful strength-based asset list that we're building from. And then you start to see, like, hey, we have way more partners that need to be in the room than we even thought because we didn't do this brainstorm of all the of all the strengths that we were before we had started.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Yeah, that's that's that's exactly it. Kind of nurturing that it's almost a creative aspect of how it and as soon as you if you start asking anybody about the community and we talk about assets, everybody wants to brag about all the good things they have too. And that just spurs on more ideas about what could actually happen in their community as well. Yeah, really good. So I just want to ask three quick little rapid fire kind of questions, really quick short answers and that as we kind of move into the closing part. So you've got so much expertise in these areas in Dallas. When we talk about Saskatchewan, you know, what do you think there's one thing that we do really well?

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yeah, when I think of Saskatchewan, I think of human ingenuity, honestly. Like my growing up on a farm, watching my grandpa, you could fix anything, build anything, just the industrious sort of nature of the province. I think that's a that lends itself to a natural entrepreneurial spirit that people just just make stuff happen and and I think the more we can fuel and and nurture and and just show people like find mentors, find find that that supportive pathways for these for these entrepreneurs, then and and then get them to think think bigger. Those are the people that are going to build the future of the province.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Yeah. And and what do you think there might be, is there one thing kind of holding us back right now?

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Yeah, my my my intuition, again with limited context, because I haven't lived there in a long time, but I I think the when it comes to the the ingenuity and and the the passion of the people and stuff like that is like we need to think at bigger scales. I think that's one of the keys is to think at a bigger scale without getting into that that head space of like, oh, I can't think of that scale because all these things are missing, right? Capital's missing, marketers are missing, can't do that, right? And so that's the that's the magic sauce, right? Is like how do we think bigger and scale up without being locked out of our own based on our own mindset of like what all the gaps and what's missing? And I think that's the the the the biggest opportunity for Saskatchewan add more, like think value at. We used to have this saying growing up in Saskatchewan that for every, I think, can't remember, I think it was Paul Martin that that that that coined this phrase, but for every rail car full of grain, you just put a young person on the top and ship them out of the province with it. And it was sort of this idea of like, why aren't we adding value to things as much, right? And we have the same problem in BC too, but just think about value add and scale. Like, what's the right scale to add value across all these different sectors and industries that we have and assets that we have?

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Yeah. And last little quick question If Saskatchewan was to have one big bold move over the next 12 months, in your expertise, what do you think that would be that would really start us on that pathway?

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting right now watching the the landscape play out in the world right now with with the geopolitics, right? The the the stuff with the the tariffs and like the changing, the new world order as the as the prime minister's coined, and watching that play out, thinking about like Canada as a resource economy. And I think that's a flawed actually mindset to have is that in order to develop an economy, you have to only think about resources and big projects and big major things. I think that's actually a little bit of a flawed model because what it does is it puts us in this sort of this sort of like nanny state position where you're like, oh, I have to go like beg Prime Minister Kearney for money to invest in my province and in my project and my infrastructure. And I think the opposite is actually what's going to change, what's going to give us, and that's like looking at local sovereignty, local control, local scale, local investment, keeping more wealth in our, in our regions, in our communities, in our province. And to do that, we need to do it, we need to like take ownership ourselves. And that's where I think to go full circle in this conversation, that's where we need an ecosystem approach. It's like we need to bring our our own leaders, our own entrepreneurs, our own investment models together in our own regions and build that for ourselves. And yeah, if there's if there's investment from the federal and the provincial government that like accelerates that, and but the but it's on our terms, right, in that case, right? Rather than sort of begging and hoping Ottawa sees our big opportunity to invest. And but I think that's a much more empowering position to be. It's also a much more narrative position when you talk about like getting young people to stay in the province, is like rather than saying, like, oh, I hope Ottawa invests in our in our province so we can do A, B, and C, it's more like, no, I hope that we can build our own future. I think that's the biggest opportunity is like once you start to see those creative capital stacks and local wealth production, we start to think much more entrepreneurial and then much more more ambitiously around the right scales to actualize that.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Exactly. Exactly. Instead of instead of waiting for somebody to write to a check, we create our own path, our own future, and and and all the opportunities that come with that. That are are part of our own identity, what we offer specifically here that makes Saskatchewan so unique, which would be different than what you have in Victoria area, right? Obviously.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Well, that that's been great conversation that we've had, Dallas. We've covered lots of things. And I really thank you for sharing your experiences and your expertise on this. And um, yeah, really, really appreciate the time that you spent with me today.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Yeah, it's my pleasure. And uh I I love Saskatchewan and have so much affection for for the people and the and the values there. So I'm happy to happy to be involved. Thank you for the invitation.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Thanks so much, Dallas. Wow, a sincere thank you to Dallas Gistleton, Executive Director of the South Island Prosperity Partnership in British Columbia for sharing his expertise and the incredible work being done to build one of Canada's leading economic ecosystems. And there is a lot to unpack in that conversation. But I hope it leaves you with one important takeaway that strong regional economies don't happen by accident. They happen when communities, businesses, governments, educational institutions, indigenous partners, and organizations choose to work together with intention around a shared vision that they created. Discussion is already moving in that direction, and conversations like this help us to learn from successful models and think differently about how we can strengthen our own regions and remain competitive in a rapidly changing economy. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow Path to Prosperity, share it with your colleagues, elected officials, and community leaders, and help us keep these important conversations going. To explore more of our podcast episodes, thought leadership and practical resources from Saskatchewan Economic Development Alliance, just visit ceda.ca. I'm Crystal Frohes, and thanks for listening.