The EMRB is optimistically awaiting the final report from the Edmonton Metro Region Economic Recovery (EMRER) Working Group. Our Region represents 1/3 of the province’s GDP or $105B. The EMRB recommendations to the EMRER would enable continued growth and prosperity in the Region. These recommendations include approving a region-wide plan to conserve prime agricultural lands and growing the value-added agriculture sector, removing barriers to accessing provincial broadband funding, and aligning provincial funding to key regional transportation priorities that will help move people, goods and services and connect to the world.


The EMRB is optimistically awaiting the final report from the Edmonton Metro Region Economic Recovery (EMRER) Working Group, which was established by the Government of Alberta in February 2022. The working group, chaired by Searle Turton, MLA for Spruce Grove-Stony Plain, and chair of the Capital Region Caucus, consists of leaders from across industry sectors.

Over the past year, the working group heard from stakeholders including industry, small and medium businesses, and business associations from across key sectors, YEG (formerly EIA), the Industrial Heartland, and post-secondaries, among others. The focus of their discussions centered around revitalizing and attracting investment to the Edmonton Metro Region, seeking feedback from stakeholders on specific challenges as well as proposed solutions.

Like the Government of Alberta, the EMRB understands what’s needed to drive growth, generate prosperity, and improve livability – smart infrastructure, the right talent, forward-thinking policies, and a collaborative mindset. Together, our 13 member municipalities are working together to break down traditional barriers and boundaries to harness the tremendous potential of the Region for the benefit of all. 

With this in mind, the EMRB was pleased to present to the EMRER Working Group the following recommendations:

• Grow the Region’s agricultural sector by approving the EMRB’s Regional Agriculture Master Plan (RAMP). RAMP is the first-ever regional plan to enable us to soundly manage our prime agricultural lands for the future of agriculture and the agriculture sector. It provides certainty to farmers, producers, and investors so we can grow the Region’s agricultural sector from $4.5 billion to $10 billion. In December 2022, we were pleased to learn that the Government of Alberta had approved RAMP, enabling its implementation and triggering further pieces of work, including the mapping of our agricultural assets.
• Align provincial capital funding to regional transportation priorities. The EMRB’s Integrated Regional Transportation Master Plan (IRTMP), which was developed in collaboration with Alberta Transportation, provides a model that helps to ensure public dollars are maximized by identifying the most significant and valuable transportation infrastructure priorities/projects for the Region — those projects that will enhance our collective ability to better move people, goods, and services. The Edmonton Metro Region covers 9,500 km² and funding to ensure we have a high performing transportation network is critical for greater economic prosperity and investment readiness materialize.
• Remove barriers to accessing provincial broadband funding. In 2020, the EMRB’s broadband situational analysis noted that increased connectivity would add up to $1B in the Region’s annual GDP (equivalent to $1,100 per household) if average connection speed reached 100 MBPS. To date, the provincial and federal governments have earmarked $780M to improve digital infrastructure across the province. While this funding is not negligible, the EMRB has advocated for less red tape as many municipalities have been unable to qualify for funding. We were pleased to see the Government of Alberta’s establish the Alberta Broadband Fund (ABF), with expanded eligibility, which we are optimistic will result in more opportunities for the Region’s municipalities to access grant funding and attract third-party funding partners.
• Partner to fund efforts to implement and maintain a regional data strategy. Data enables evidence-informed decision-making, and it is a critical asset that can be a differentiator for the Region in identifying and promoting the opportunities that exist for investors.
• Continue to support research and development, so that the Region can commercialize and capitalize on the innovation that happens here.

What would you do if you knew your home would grow by another 1M people and another 470K projected jobs in the next 25-30 years? That was the challenge facing the Edmonton Metro Region when Premier Stelmach established, in 2008, the Capital Region Board (CRB; the former iteration of the EMRB) with its 23 municipal members.

And so, with that, began our 15-year journey. Since then, member municipalities have come together, bringing the right talent, forward-thinking policies, and a collaborative mindset to ensure we are creating a globally competitive Region that offers an unparalleled quality of life and a wealth of economic opportunities. But we didn’t get here overnight.

Significant milestones

The CRB approved its first regional growth plan in 2010, Growing Forward, with the aim of ensuring sustainability of the Region for future generations. It represented an innovative and deliberate shift in planning with the emphasis on greater integration of land uses and geographic information systems (GIS), with transportation and housing. This integrated and strategic approach to planning aimed to identify the overall development patterns and key future infrastructure investments that would best complement existing infrastructure, services and land uses in the Region, and which would also maximize benefits to the Region.

The CRB dedicated nearly a decade working on key initiatives resulting in:

• the establishment in 2009 of a shared regional geographic information services that supports decision making;
• the approval of a first Integrated Regional Transportation Master Plan (IRTMP) in 2011;
• the publication in 2012 of Our Affordable Future – Market Affordable Housing Framework, which includes recommendations for the Region to increase the supply of market affordable housing in the Region; 
• the publication in 2014 of Capitalize, The Economic Roadmap for Alberta’s Capital Region;
• between 2013-16, the Board hosted multiple regional housing symposia and completed housing needs assessments that informed the development of a regional and sub-regional housing planning model in 2017;
• the approval in 2016 of the Capital Region Energy Corridors Master Plan, which recognized that energy corridors are needed to provide efficient and cost-effective access into and out of the Region from power and petroleum producing sources; and
• the publication of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Economic Development Strategy and Framework, which paves the way in 2017 for the establishment of Edmonton Global, a foreign direct investment (FDI) and international business development agency.

In 2017, as a result of a modernized Municipal Government Act coming into force, the CRB becomes Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board (EMRB), and along with an expanded mandate, the membership goes from 24 to 13 members representing municipalities with a population of at least 5,000.

Over the past five years, the EMRB continued to fulfill critical pieces of its mandate, including:

• the development of a Metropolitan Region Servicing Plan, to ensure that the many municipal services needed to support and enhance the quality of life for all or our residents are effective, sustainable and remain affordable;
• the development of an updated, multi-modal and seamless Integrated Regional Transportation Master Plan (IRTMP), that will ensures we can move people, goods and services to, from and around the Region with ease and as few barriers as possible;
• the approval a first-ever Regional Agriculture Master Plan (RAMP) to provide a consistent approach to support managing prime agricultural lands to ensure the growth of the agricultural sector; 
• the approval of Shared Investment for Shared Benefit (SISB), a framework and model for regional collaboration based on a rigorous process and data driven decision-making tools to identify initiatives that are regionally significant and quantify the shared investment and benefits for partners; and
• a broadband situational analysis that identified the challenges and opportunities related to connectivity and digital infrastructure in the Region, which helped to create a compelling case to improve broadband service through coordinated advocacy and investment in the Region.

Through our rigorous, collaborative, transparent governance model, this growth management board has been able to deliver on many foundational pieces related to our mandate, driving efficiencies, and enhancing prosperity and livability. But our work isn’t done.

As our new 2023–26 business plan, Propelling the Region Forward demonstrates, we are reaching a new milestone in the evolution of our organization. We are incrementally shifting from the development of major regional plans to the implementation of these plans.

This is how we will truly build a globally competitive Region. Here is to celebrating many more successes!

Ever wondered what our Region might look like in 25-30 years? How some decisions we make today, might turn out tomorrow? We do…all the time! As part of the five-year interim review of the growth plan, we’re looking at population, employment and housing forecasts and trends as well as different scenarios. To help us imagine what’s driving growth, we’re also partnering with other regional leaders to undertake some very cool modelling to create a synthetic region. Think SimCity (the computer game), supported with artificial intelligence, but for real. 

Ever wondered what our Region might look like in 25-30 years? How some decisions we make today, might turn out tomorrow? We do…all the time!

The EMRB and member municipalities have a collective responsibility for implementing our award-winning growth plan, Re-Imagine. Plan. Build. and fulfilling the 50-year vision to grow responsibility to ensure we can accommodate the next million people and 470k jobs.

It has been five years since the our new growth plan was approved, and built into it is a requirement to undertake an interim review at this juncture. While five years may seem like a long time, we are only just beginning our implementation journey. With this in mind, and although the interim review is not meant to be a significant update, it is nonetheless an opportunity to course-correct where needed. This work will be critical as part of evergreening the growth plan to ensure it continues to provide sound policy direction towards the achievement of the plan’s outcomes. It will also set the foundation for and inform the more significant 10-year comprehensive update through updating projections, gathering data, monitoring, and reporting of implementation.

As part of the five-year interim review of the growth plan we are evaluating key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure they are measuring growth plan progress appropriately. We are also looking at our growth rate and where this growth is occurring to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. To be successful at planning for the next 25 years, assumptions and forecasts about future population and employment trends must be made.

Applications Management Consulting has developed a population and employment forecast model for the Region, including building preliminary scenarios and modelling different drivers that can influence industry growth. The workflow of the project is being completed in two streams: 1. Projections for economic growth and activity, and 2. Population growth and housing forecasts associated with satisfying the demand for housing. Several trends, residential growth factors, employment area factors, and employment growth parameters were applied to this model.

In partnership with other organizations in the Region, we tasked RUNWITHIT Synthetics with creating a synthetic model of what the Region will look like to 2044. The goal was to build a tool to assist the Region in tackling complex problems using a common base of data and information, which is unique to this Region. SEEITALL (Synthetic Edmonton Metropolitan Region Environment Intelligent Advanced Lab) was created to simulate the Region to 2044 based on data from municipalities, census data, and other open sources. Think SimCity (the computer game), supported with artificial intelligence, but for real. The dynamic model was overlayed with other data like household characteristics, land use, population projections, and infrastructure. RUNWITHIT can influence the model to identify gaps and pitfalls. 

All this work is already providing some very interesting preliminary insights, which were presented to the EMRB Growth Plan Five-Year Interim Review Task Force during its January meeting (watch here).

DYK: Knowing the employment estimates along with the productivity of the workforce, are key factors that are taken into consideration when determining the impact on the economy and GDP growth.

Our Region has been built on people with the know-how, ingenuity, and passion to get things done. Our Board recently approved its new 3-year strategic plan Future Forward: A Region by Design that maps out our vision for enabling growth and continuing on the trajectory for planning for a globally competitive Region.


Our Region has been built on people with the know-how, ingenuity, and passion to get things done. On Feb. 9, the Board approved its 3-year strategic plan Future Forward: A Region by Design that maps out our vision for enabling growth and continuing on the trajectory for planning for a globally competitive Region.
While our vision is bold, the plan is methodical. It is a continuous, integrated, and flexible plan that is reviewed annually to remain nimble and responsive to the Region’s continually changing environment. Through our three strategies, we will enhance the overall well-being of every resident in the Region.

• Strategy 1: Enabling a Prosperous Region – We will attract investment by offering consistent and integrated long-term plans that support the growth of major employment areas, interconnected by efficient infrastructure and multi-modal forms of transportation, and foster complete communities, in both rural and urban settings to ensure the highest quality of life.
• Strategy 2: Stewarding Our Natural Assets – We will maximize the use of existing and planned infrastructure, and protect our watersheds, airsheds, and environmentally sensitive areas. Wisely manage the Region’s prime agricultural land base to ensure long-term viability and food security, and effectively manage solid waste and support a circular economy. We will also plan for parks and open spaces for our residents to enjoy cultural and recreational activities and to connect with nature and one another.
• Strategy 3: Building Enduring Partnerships – We are stronger when we work together.  By working in partnership with others, we can better understand what makes us unique, where our strengths are, where we have assets to leverage and collective problems to solve, and where we can offer a more attractive and diverse set of opportunities for all.

As with every initiative, the strategic plan reflects the objectives of the growth plan.

DYK: According to Statistics Canada, over the past decade (2011 to 2021), the population in the Region has increased more than 250k.