OP-ED: The Calgary chamber of commerce is a joke

Caitlyn Madlener write, "DEI policies were once met with little more than an exaggerated eye-roll, it is now increasingly viewed as ineffective or even counterproductive."

I have been racking my brain trying to come up with a moment in the past decade where the Calgary Chamber of Commerce took a position that even vaguely resembled the best interests of local businesses.

Unfortunately, I will probably have an aneurysm searching my memory for something that does not exist.

The woes of its members, however, do not appear to be a priority for the Chamber. No, its focus seems to be on advancing ideologically fashionable policies rather than addressing the challenges of doing business in Calgary.

On the Chamber’s own website, “Inclusion and Equity” has its own category under “Policy and Advocacy”, while issues that directly affect the business community, such as ever-increasing municipal property taxes, are given no attention at all. One affects payrolls and profits; the other amounts to performative signalling.

While these terms may once have been innocuous administrative jargon, they have since become political signals and shorthand for initiatives such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI. And while DEI policies were once met with little more than an exaggerated eye-roll, it is now increasingly viewed as ineffective or even counterproductive.

In 2025, Abacus Data conducted a poll asking Canadians what impact they believed DEI policies had on the economy. The results found that 33% believed DEI had no impact whatsoever, while 21% believed it had an overall negative impact. Together, those figures suggest either waning confidence or outright skepticism toward these academia-driven policies.

DEI, however, is not even on the radar for most businesses. In fact, as an Aristotle Foundation study released this week shows, it is largely Canada’s biggest corporations that continue to pander to this particular signal, and even then, often only performatively. The study analyzed job postings from a variety of companies and found that “Canada’s largest corporations laud DEI, while preserving merit-based hiring in practice.”

To make matters worse, the Chamber has consistently prioritized DEI signalling over issues that directly affect businesses. In April of this year, it released an entire report calling for increased “workforce inclusivity,” including more foreign workers, while repeating the long-disputed talking point that women earn 87 cents on the dollar. Merely a month later, when Calgary businesses were faced with another massive property tax increase, the Chamber produced no equivalent report and mounted no campaign. Its eagerness to focus on academic buzzwords rather than practical challenges for businesses speaks volumes.

And what exactly does this patchwork advocacy accomplish for the broader business community? It is certainly not a strategy grounded in consistent principles. Nor does it meaningfully help the people who invest their blood, sweat, and capital into building Calgary’s economy.

At some point, one has to ask what problems the Chamber is actually trying to solve.

The Chamber’s self-imposed mandate of advancing its own institutional identity rather than representing the interests of its members is further illustrated in its approach to major economic debates. Despite oil and gas representing Calgary’s largest industry, it has repeatedly called for economic diversification away from it. The Chamber’s website dedicates an entire page under their policy to moving away from oil and gas. The website states: “Alberta has a unique opportunity to diversify its economy, both within and beyond the energy sector.”

This reasoning is akin to a business organization in Las Vegas advocating against casino development. It is difficult to understand why an organization whose stated purpose is to strengthen Calgary’s business community would champion policies that undermine its largest economic sector.

The Chamber’s self-imposed mandate of advancing its own institutional identity rather than representing the interests of its members was once again on display this week. In a press release, it claimed that nearly half of businesses would relocate if Albertans voted to begin the separation process. Yet the survey on which this conclusion was based received just 137 responses.

That figure represents well under one percent of Calgary’s registered businesses.

For the Chamber to present itself as the definitive voice of Calgary commerce on the basis of such a sample is misleading at best and malicious at worst. Yet headlines across major newspapers were quick to repeat the claim as though it were an economic prophecy.

With the Chamber generating dramatic headlines, one has to ask: is it really in the best interests of an organization dedicated to promoting a prosperous and stable business community to fan the flames of uncertainty? And if Calgary’s business community is genuinely rattled by constant separation discussions, does it make sense for the Chamber itself to amplify them?

At some point, these statements begin to read less like advocacy and more like third-party advertising for the referendum.

In the same press release, the Chamber enlisted economist Trevor Tombe to reinforce those concerns. In his analysis, he claimed Alberta’s economy could lose $62 billion annually after independence. These figures are not hard realities businesses face today but speculative projections built upon dissimilar situations.

What the Chamber refuses to acknowledge is that federal regulations and policies have already cost Calgary businesses far more than even its most alarming independence projections. The cancellation of the Teck Resources oilsands project alone represented tens of billions in lost economic activity and employment opportunities. Government revenue alone was estimated to be $70 billion from the Teck project.

If a single cancelled project can rival the costs associated with the Chamber’s most frightening independence scenarios, one can only imagine the cumulative cost when all the other federally obstructed projects are added to the ledger.

Without a clear understanding of whose interests it serves, the Chamber’s advocacy inevitably becomes contradictory. In 2024, it released a report proposing solutions to Calgary’s rapid population growth through housing and infrastructure expansion. Yet in the very same year, it also advocated for increased immigration, further accelerating population growth, while simultaneously demanding lower taxes and reduced government spending.

The Chamber’s desire to advance fashionable public-relations campaigns while occasionally advocating for its members demonstrates an embarrassing lack of strategic coherence. Its policy positions seem to flip more often than a tossed coin.

Perhaps that is the deeper problem with modern advocacy organizations, whether they represent business, labour, or agriculture. They are increasingly populated by professional intermediaries - journalists, consultants, and lobbyists - who claim to speak the language of an industry without ever having had to survive within it.

Of course, once one looks to the leadership of the Chamber of Commerce, the academic-influenced and signalling-heavy priorities begin to make more sense.

Deborah Yedlin, the Chamber’s current CEO, brings roughly as much operational business experience as a slug can teach a bird how to fly. Before joining the Chamber, she served as Chancellor of the University of Calgary, which neatly explains the organization’s preference for institutional messaging. Prior to that, she worked as a business columnist for various newspapers, with her longest tenure being at the CBC.

Rather than being led by someone who has built and scaled a business in Calgary’s competitive environment, the city’s primary business advocacy organization is headed by someone whose career largely consists of academia, press release regurgitation, and occasionally calling people for quotes. A low-level McDonald’s manager likely has more practical business experience.

One could argue that the CEO of the Chamber does not need direct entrepreneurial experience. Perhaps that is true. But it is akin to believing a food critic could successfully run a Michelin-star restaurant. The gap between commentary and practical experience matters.

And that gap becomes a canyon the deeper one digs into the Chamber’s policy positions.

And so the Calgary Chamber of Commerce continues to produce statements that seem to benefit itself more than the people it claims to represent.

One can hope it eventually reorients itself toward the unglamorous work of advocating for businesses rather than signalling to academics, consultants, and journalists. But for now, as it continues to prioritize optics over outcomes and headlines over hard realities, it becomes increasingly difficult to describe the Chamber as anything other than an organization that has drifted so far from its mandate that it no longer convincingly resembles one at all.