Kelowna

The city of Kelowna was voted the most business friendly city in B.C. according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Photo: Trevor Rockliffe

CFIB's Communities in Boom: Canada's Top Entrepreneurial Cities, compares 100 of Canada's large and mid-sized municipalities on such measures as the number of small businesses in a community, the degree of business optimism, and on the effectiveness of local and provincial policy on businesses.

Ted Mallett, the Vice-President of CFIB, says small and medium enterprises employ about 52 per-cent of all working individuals in the country.

“There is no single best way to measure the entrepreneurship quotient of cities, so CFIB combines a range of approaches to arrive at a series of scores.”

Mallett explains, a good indicator of an entrepreneurial hot spot is a high concentration of entrepreneurs and a high business start-up rate.

“Good public policy is also critical, so we look at the presence of supportive local government tax and regulatory policies.”

Kelowna was ranked 13th overall in the country and number one in B.C.

Mayor Sharon Shepherd says she is pleased that Kelowna is making its presence known in entrepreneurship, she notes the city has some top notch small business organizers, so she isn't that surprised.

"Joel Young is with the Okangan Valley Enterprenture Society and he had a vision of being the best entrepreneurial model in the valley. I challenged him to just start with Kelowna and he has excelled in branding enterprises and using the best practices for small businesses."

Shepherd believes with enterprenures like Young it won't be long before Kelowna is in the top 10 or even number one. 

There were 12 core indictors that were measured to arrive at the final score:

Presence:
  1. Net business start ups
  2. Businesses per capita
  3. Self-employement intensity
  4. Industry employment diversity

Perspective:
  5. Future business performance
  6. Future full-time hiring expectations
  7. Overall state of business

Policy:
    8. Cost of local government
    9. Local government sensitivity to local business
  10. Local government regulation
  11. Local government tax balance
  12. Whether local government has subscribed to the ‘bizpal’ program

Photo: Trevor Rockliffe

In the category of 'presence' Kelowna was give a score of 74 out of 100, and was considered a strong score by the CIFB.

Kelowna was recognized as a diverse economy with lots of business start-ups and showed an above average growth in the number of business establishments.

Caroline Grover, the CEO of Kelowna's Chamber of Commerce, says that anytime you have a desirable place to live, like Kelowna, you will attract a level of of entrepreneurs who want to invest in the city.

"This is really exciting, I think people see opportunity here in Kelowna and many of those people have the ability and commitment to build on it and become entrepreneurs, which is great for our city."

Here are some of the other top B.C. cities:

• Prince George placed 26
• Penticton 31
• Kamloops 35
• Vernon 40
• Nanaimo 51
• Victoria 71
• Vancouver 93

The top city in the country with the best entrepreneurial edge was Grand Prairie Alberta with a top score of 74 out of 100.

This is the fourth annual instalment of CIFB's communities in Boom.

Photo: Contributed - CFIB

The top 100 cities for businesses