A lot is being made these days of head offices being lo-cated
in Saskatchewan, a topic that has some legs be-cause
of legislation guaranteeing Potash Corp’s HQ
operations would always be located in Saskatchewan. And now that
it has become part of Nutrien, the debate over what is in Saskatoon
and what is in Calgary is on.
This is not a new topic, but it is an important one.
For the most part, Saskatchewan is not a corporate headquar-ters
destination. The oil industry is a good example. We’re the sec-ond
largest oil producer in Canada, but don’t have a top company’s
headquarters located here. In short, we’re being mined from Calgary.
Sure, we get the jobs and the royalties, but they get the equity lift, the
office space and the decision makers.
And it might be time for a rethink of how we approach this topic.
First, some backstories: I’ve had the opportunity to write a couple
books on local business and, in the process, spent time with former
Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed while doing the research. We talk-ed
about head offices. We talked about it a lot.
He was a big proponent of moving corporate offices to his prov-ince.
He was, to put it broadly, sick and tired of having decisions af-fecting
his province being made in Toronto. So, he made it a priority.
Two decades later (and it often takes that long), his policy saw
firms such as Imperial Oil and CP Rail move to Calgary, bringing
thousands of jobs and decision makers who filled thousands of
BY PAUL MARTIN, MARTIN CHARLTON COMMUNICATIONS
THE BOTTOM LINE
square feet of downtown office space that someone had to build. In
short, it brought investment.
We, on the other hand, have seen head offices go the other way –
from Saskatchewan to places such as Calgary or Chicago. But we’ve
also had some successes. Viterra moved to Calgary and then came
back under new ownership. IPSCO didn’t. We’ll see about Nutrien.
But maybe it’s time to make this a provincial priority. It can be a
multi-pronged approach. First, start with the ones that are already
here. A premier could, for example, declare that we are now serious
about head offices and we’re going to start with the ones we have –
the Crowns. They are the foundation we’ll build upon. That would,
if nothing else, take privatization off the table as an issue (especially
for right-of-centre parties).
Second, we work closely with big firms like AGT, Viterra or Brandt
to ensure they are getting what they need to stay here.
Next, we look at the next tier of companies – firms that are mem-bers
of SHCA, for example – to help them identify opportunities
for growth and, perhaps, skew procurement policies to give added
points or credits to firms paying the bulk of their corporate taxes to
the Saskatchewan government.
Finally, we could create a shopping list of companies that should
be headquartered here and undertake a concerted effort to attract
them to Saskatchewan. This, as evidenced in the Lougheed example,
is the long-term play, but it is a strategic objective worthy of more at-tention
than it currently receives.
The Head
Office Debate
ALEXANDER KHARCHENKO/123RF
44 Think BIG | Quarter 1 2019 | saskheavy.ca
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