Beyond the barrel: Deborah Yedlin on Calgary’s economic pivot

“It is not all about the oil price anymore,” says Deborah Yedlin.

For decades, Calgary’s economic pulse was measured in barrels. But according to Yedlin, president and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, that metric no longer tells the whole story.

Calgary’s current transition highlights the pressures that accompany rapid growth in a mid-sized city. The city added nearly 100,000 people between 2023 and 2024, a surge shaped as much by affordability pressures elsewhere as by local economic pull.

At the same time, the city has begun experimenting with financing tools used elsewhere, including its first municipal bond in 2024, a step that lowers borrowing costs while highlighting rising pressure on services and infrastructure.

During Calgary Innovation Week, Yedlin sat down with Digital Journal at Platform Calgary to reflect on how shifts in behaviour, investment, and expectations are reshaping a city long viewed through the lens of its dominant industry. 

Her comments led to a wider conversation about how regions adapt when old assumptions no longer hold.

From covering the economy to navigating its shifts

Yedlin’s perspective is shaped by more than three decades across finance, media, and civic leadership. She began her career as an investment banker in New York and Toronto before moving into business journalism in the mid-1990s.

Years spent covering energy and markets for the Calgary Herald, Financial Post, and CBC gave her a long view of how the sector solves problems under pressure. Since becoming the head of the Chamber in  2021, she has been working to apply those insights to the city’s economic adaptation.

“Innovation is about doing things differently, more effectively, creatively,” she says. “Trying to work with old industries to help them do things in a way that is faster, cheaper, more productive, but also coming up with ways to do things that we thought we could do one way, in a completely different way, and achieve the same results or better.”

She says she sees a direct line between that definition and the habits built in the energy sector, where efficiency and technical problem-solving have long been core disciplines.

“It has increased its efficiency, decreased the emissions intensity, found ways to extract barrels and MCF of gas in ways that have made them more efficient,” she says.

Yedlin adds that this mindset has now migrated into other sectors, applied to new types of problems and new forms of growth, including technology firms and service businesses applying the same focus on efficiency and problem-solving to new markets.

Responding to pressure

This shift did not happen all at once. 

Calls for diversification have surfaced repeatedly in Alberta, dating back to the creation of the Heritage Savings Trust Fund in 1976, often rising and falling with oil price volatility. What changed, Yedlin argues, was the slow, grinding recovery after the 2014 crash.

“People were sort of looking at prior historical crashes in the oil price and saying every time it had this dramatic crash, it often bounced back really quickly,” she says. “Well, it did not happen this time.”

Instead of waiting for a rebound that didn’t come, a different response began to take shape over several years. Platform Calgary emerged as a focal point. Creative Destruction Lab Rockies established a presence at the University of Calgary. Founders who had previously operated in silos began building momentum together.

“There were little drops, and now I feel like we have got a big puddle,” she says. “And it is just getting bigger.”

The effects of that transition are visible in daily behaviour. Watching the oil price used to be a reflexive habit in Calgary, but it no longer defines how residents read the economy. It remains a quick gut check for the economy, but it no longer answers every question on its own.

New faces, new expectations

This economic pivot is being reinforced by a demographic one. Calgary’s population growth remains well above historical averages, driven by the draw of affordability and opportunity. 

These newcomers bring different skills, backgrounds and ambitions. They are altering the city’s labour market, shifting its skill mix and contributing to changing cultural expectations.

“They come with a new sort of skill set, mindset, creative thinking in terms of what is possible,” Yedlin says. “You are not locked into a box.”

However, rapid growth carries pressure. Housing, transit and public safety are now top concerns, forcing the newly elected mayor and council to set priorities quickly, themes the city has also flagged in its economic outlook event.

“We want the city to be competitive. We want to continue to attract capital,” she says. “We want to be able to support those who come here, because when they come here, they do not come with their teachers and their doctors and everything else.”

Yedlin says Canadian cities face a structural constraint when it comes to revenue tools, with most relying on property taxes and user fees.

“In the best of all possible worlds, we actually have a change in how we can raise revenue, because right now it is tied to property taxes and fees,” she says. “There is a very strong and robust municipal bond market. Why do we not have one in Canada?”

Calgary took a step in that direction in 2024, issuing its first municipal bond, raising about $180 million and lowering its borrowing costs, according to the City of Calgary.

Municipal borrowing in Canada is largely governed by provincial frameworks, which has historically limited how cities finance long-term infrastructure. Expanding revenue tools could give municipalities greater flexibility as populations grow and demands on services increase.

Calgary’s bond issuance offers a case study in how cities might begin to rethink traditional financing models. How far that approach goes will depend on how municipal leaders balance growth with long-term investment in the systems that support it.

The competitiveness gap

Yedlin argues that these municipal financial constraints are part of a broader context of lagging national investment and productivity.

“Canadian companies are way behind,” she says. “We need to stimulate that kind of investment.”

She highlights a long-standing disconnect between resource prices and the Canadian dollar as evidence of a deeper issue.

“It is not about the energy sector. It is not about the oil price anymore. It is about the fact that we do not attract foreign investment into the country,” she says. “We do not want to be a line item in somebody else’s balance sheet.”

For Yedlin, some responses are within reach: reduce internal trade barriers, improve labour mobility, and treat procurement as a strategic tool.

“We have to do better as a city, as a province, as a country, at procurement and really taking risks on what is homemade,” she says. “It is almost like you have to validate yourself south of the border before anybody takes you seriously here.”

A blueprint for resilience

Yedlin’s message extends far beyond the specific context of Calgary Innovation Week. She frames the city’s evolution not as a finished achievement but as a response to uncertainty. The changes underway in how the city finances growth, nurtures talent, and encourages collaboration show that old approaches to economic development may no longer be enough.

Ultimately, the question is whether Canada can replicate this urgency at a national scale.

Regions that align resources, people, and policy to support experimentation create environments where new ideas can take hold. Building resilience in the economy is less about predicting the next boom or bust and more about creating the capacity to respond, adapt, and grow.