Saskatchewan relies heavily on the boom-and-bust cycles of the oil industry, but in the city of Swift Current, business is doing well despite the downturn in the economy.
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A big part of the city’s success is due to the construction of the Chinook Power Station, set to switch on by October 2019. The natural gas plant will be able to power a city the size of Saskatoon.
“It’s huge — it’s a $650 million project to make a combined cycle gas generation plant, power for SaskPower. What it’s ultimately going to mean is 400 temporary jobs in our community,” Perrault said.
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Swift Current is ranked the most entrepreneurial city in the province by the Canadian Federation of Business. The city hopes this will help them reach their goal of 25,000 residents by 2025.
This means the city has to grow about 1,000 people every year for the next eight years.
The community has already started seeing benefits, with new restaurants, franchises and other businesses popping up in the community.
City officials aren’t saying the community is in a boom quite yet, but the hope is that oil prices will start to go up.
“We are in a steady growth cycle — we have been for a number of years,” Salberg said. “We do know when the oil sector comes back, we will be back into the boom.”