Dawson Creek - Economy

Economy

The economy of Dawson Creek is based around four major industries: agriculture, retail, tourism, and oil and gas. Agriculture has historically been the most important industry to Dawson Creek, as the city is the regional transshipment point for agricultural commodities. The city is surrounded by the Agricultural Land Reserve, where the soil can support livestock and produces consistently good yields of quality grain and grass crops, such as canola, hay, oats, alfalfa, wheat, and sweet clover. The service and retail sector caters to the city's inhabitants, smaller nearby towns, and rural communities. However, there is significant retail leakage to Grande Prairie, the closest major Alberta city, where there is no provincial tax on retail purchases, while British Columbia charges 7%. In 2006, the BC government rejected a proposal to lower the sales tax in the province's border communities to 4%. The problem of leakage has been exacerbated in recent years by the introduction of large-format retail stores into the small city. Residents still cross the border for high-priced items but now also purchase medium- and low-priced items from foreign-owned large-format chain stores.

Dawson Creek has a large tourism industry as Mile "0" of the Alaska Highway. Thousands of people drive on the highway every year, starting in Dawson Creek and ending in Fairbanks, Alaska. The trek is often made with recreational vehicles, sometimes in convoys which gather in the city. In the winter, the hospitality industry caters to workers from the oil patches. Discoveries south of Dawson Creek and higher energy prices have spurred oil and gas activities, which have in turn driven the nearby Fort St. John economy to spill over to the Dawson Creek economy. British Columbia's first wind farm, Bear Mountain Wind Park, was constructed southwest of the city in 2009.