Doug Griffiths in Moosomin Wednesday
March 21, 2023, 1:10 pm
Best-selling author of 13 Ways to Kill your Community and former Alberta MLA Doug Griffiths will be speaking in Moosomin on Wednesday, March 22 to talk about collaborating and working together with surrounding communities to support overall regional collaboration, and economic growth.
The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Moosomin Conexus Convention Centre. Prices for early bird tickets are $30 each.
“I’ll be sharing, like I always do, stories about when collaboration doesn’t work and a lot of stories about the importance of collaboration between businesses, between businesses and chambers, between the chambers and local government and industry,” said Griffiths.
“I’ll be sharing stories about where communities fall down and also success stories. I do often relate a story about two towns and a county working on a regional economic development strategy where I gave a bit of a presentation about the need for regional collaboration to be successful. After I finished, one of the gentlemen from the county said ‘Doug, you said we’re friends and that we need to work together, but you’re wrong. They’re not our friends in town, they’re our enemies, they want our money so they can build more sidewalks in town, put a pool in, do more street lights, they’re not our friends.’ Then another guy from the county stood up and said, ‘but doesn’t your mom live in town?’
“The actual title of the presentation I’ll be doing is: I’ve seen the enemy and it’s my mom. I’ve described that (attitude) as the plague of the 21st century when it comes to municipalities, which is the fear of losing your autonomy, your identity and your power.
“I’ve actually been in places where a regional collaboration framework is being signed so that they can work together, share resources for economic development, have a marketing strategy, to dealing with other things like housing, which is a huge issue all over North America right now.
“I have had to deal with people who openly say things like, ‘I heard if we sign this deal they’re going to take our town sign down, they’re going to take the history books out of our library because we won’t exist anymore.’ It’s sort of the conspiratorial mindset. I have seen that a lot, it is a thing that holds municipalities back from achieving success probably more so than anything else.”
Last year alone, Griffiths visited over 522 communities where he gave presentations and spoke to representatives about community collaboration.
One of the key points to how municipalities can work together with their neighboring communities is building a relationship with one another, Griffiths said.
