By Curtis Galbraith

Former city councilor named Chamber chair

Dec 7, 2018 | 12:31 PM

The twinning of Highway 40 is something the new chair of the Grande Prairie & District Chamber of Commerce wants to work on during his one-year term.
 
Dan Wong was named to the post at the Chamber’s annual general meeting Thursday.
 
“It’s just become such a dangerous highway for both the residents of Grande Prairie going to and from the city and for industry use. We see activity starting to pick up there, but we’re afraid that it may stall out if that highway doesn’t continue to get the planning towards the twinning that it really deserves.”
 
He thinks everything looks optimistic when it comes to the economy in the Peace Country. That is because this region is predominately natural gas, rather than oil.
 
“Natural gas prices seem to be doing much better than oil, so we’re very optimistic. We’re starting to see developers come back and start looking at subdivision projects, which there’s been quite a stall over the past few years.”
 
Wong also served two terms on Grande Prairie city council, experience he thinks will be helpful with issues “closer to home.” It will also allow him to see things from both the city hall side and business side of things.
 
He says the first thing he wants to do is utilize the expertise of new board members, something that may not have been fully utilized in past years.
 
“We’re a very active Chamber in terms of advocacy. This year is going to be an extremely challenging year because we’re going to have two elections coming up, the provincial election and the federal election. While we are preparing for the election forums, we have to come up with policies we want to support to make a better business environment for people in our region.”