Elevated oil prices these days are helping lift Alberta’s economy, not just in the energy sector but by extension to many other businesses throughout the province.

“And we are seeing in Alberta some really nice diversification into that tech sector,” says Todd Hirsch, Economist & Director, Energy Transition Centre.

“Alberta I think is in not bad shape at all business wise and economy wise.”

But Hirsch says there are four what he calls possible “drivers of disruption” which could impact not only the Alberta economy but economies nationally and globally. Those drivers include geopolitics, inflation and by extension interest rates, more extreme weather events, and technology, particularly AI.

“We’ll wait and see what these possible disruptors will do but for 2024 I think we’re in pretty good shape. These are things that potentially could disrupt the economy and therefore the business plans of entrepreneurs. They’re not certain but we have to be aware of them and we have to have some tools in place so that if we are sideswiped with some of these drivers of disruption we’ll be able to navigate it okay,” says Hirsch.

Hirsch is a guest speaker May 1 at the Alberta Business Transitions Forum in Calgary. He will be talking more specifically about those drivers of disruption and providing people with tools to navigate these uncertain times.

Hirsch is an internationally renowned speaker and author, focusing on adaptability in the ever-changing global economic environment. An economist by training, he now focuses his research and writing on the subject of adaptability. Currently, he is the Director of the Energy Transition Centre, an incubator of tech start-ups focussed on navigating our path toward net-zero carbon. Prior to this, he served as VP and chief economist for ATB Financial. Hirsch has received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum (2022) and Diamond (2012) Jubilee Medals, the University of Alberta’s Alumni Honour Award, and an honorary degree from Mount Royal University.

Geopolitics for people can feel very remote and very far away with wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza, upheaval in places like Sudan and Haiti, and possible conflicts in Asia like Taiwan, says Hirsch.

“We don’t know how these things are going to develop but they are potentially disruptive for the global economy. They’re potentially disruptive for energy prices for global trade and there’s really nothing we can do about it, especially sitting here in Canada other than to hope for the best,” he says.

For the last couple of years, all eyes have been on how high inflation is going to go and how high interest rates are going to go.

“The question now is when will the Bank of Canada start cutting rates. No certainty around that. The market is kind of now betting on June but that’s not a certainty. Now with oil prices back up in the mid to high $80s, gasoline prices, that could delay a Bank of Canada cut into the second half of the year. We don’t know.”

Hirsch says more extreme weather events are also having an economic impact these days.

“Here in Alberta there is a lot of anxiety about drought and what that might mean for farmers, what it might mean for forest fires and by extension everybody else gets hit. Higher insurance premiums, other sectors like tourism,” he says.

“Right now everything is focused on AI. Is it the end of the world or is this the unleashing of a whole new era of productivity improvements. We don’t know. But it does lurk there as a disruptor, either positive or negative.”

(Mario Toneguzzi is a veteran of the media industry for more than 40 years and named in 2021 a Top Ten Business Journalist in the world and only Canadian. He also made the RETHINK’s global list as a Top Retail Expert 2024)