And how do you see this in 2 weeks as a tourist? Come on now. The reality is that Quebec City is quickly becoming the silicon valley of the north and his growing very fast atm.(With many growth vectors) I'm a member of both commercial chambers(Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton as well...) and I can say with great confidence that the mood in Quebec city is much better than Winnipeg these days. Particularly in the little to medium enterprise segment where the close presence of Montreal helps a lot. If I had to choose 2 cities in Canada as a business man, it would be Hamilton and Quebec, simply because of market sizes. Winnipeg is very strong in the corporation segment, I think that in the current economy they could have a franchise, however I'm a bit puzzled at what they would do if the dollar goes down again. The Nords left basically on a political dispute.
I was not there as a tourist but rather for work. My contacts were from Laval University so I had a sense that they had some feel for the place. Still I am glad
that you called me on this. I was actually going to post a more positive
follow-up but unfortunately never got around to it. After my post I did a little more digging and was pleasantly surprised about the diversification in the economy. I also notice that Canadian Business named QC the best city in Canada to do business.
The median family income was also higher than I expected.
Can you back up the claim of Silicon Valley of the north. I found quite a number of
high tech firms with offices in Quebec City. However, most all of these were
either very small or they had branches offices in Quebec with their
corporate offices in Montreal, Toronto or Ottawa. I would be rather surprise
for example if the high tech sector in Quebec employed anywhere near the
numbers of a town like Waterloo or if the number of companies in that sector
with sufficient revenues to have a substantial corporate impact on an NHL team
rivals that of the KW region. You are obviously much closer to
the Quebec corporate scene than I am so if you have information to the contrary
I would love to see it. (There are a few very good high tech research centers in QC but collectively they only employ a few hundred people).
I still stand by my conclusion that an NHL franchise could be a
hard to sell in Quebec particularly given the cost of a new arena, and the
relatively small population. However, I would be happy to be proven wrong.
PS.
The best summary breakdown I could find in one place on the employment by sector
was here.
http://www.innovationstrategy.gc.ca/gol/innovation/site.nsf/en/in02002.html
However it is five years old so I am sure things have changed. Do you have
a more up to date picture of the employment demographics.