If you haven’t already watched Prime Minister Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum, I’d recommend checking it out. We can track the gap between rhetoric and action in the coming months, but the speech alone represented a rather remarkable moment in Canada’s history. Through this speech, he offered a stark state of affairs:
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons — tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”
One line in particular keeps coming back to me:
“Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
I’ve been thinking about this often as I’ve had conversations with a number of (mostly) 40+ year older individuals who long for a return to normalcy, those who remember the pre-Trump era as one of predictability and rationality. These are helpful assumptions, particularly for those launching and growing businesses. The reality is, however, that the old world order has been dying for a while. And while it might be comforting to hold onto nostalgia, it’s not a strategy. The more time and energy we put into feeding nostalgia, the less energy we have for building a new world.
When I heard that line, I thought of our members who let go of nostalgia a long time ago and are building businesses that reflect new economic opportunities while staying grounded in their own values. It’s one of my great privileges to work with and learn from these members.
It also made me think of our 1000 Queer Businesses Strong initiative and why it felt so powerful when we first talked about it. For too long in this province, we’ve been practicing nostalgia politics, hoping our government will reverse course on their anti-2SLGBTQI+ attacks. To borrow some of PM Carney’s bluntness: they are who they are, and the old models of engaging them in dialogue, hoping they’ll grant us humanity, are unrealistic. The truth is that I’m not satisfied with queer and trans survival depending on the approval of whichever leaders happen to be in power.
I want queer and trans thriving. Nostalgia does not offer a map that will lead us there. Instead, we need creativity, openness, and courage to do the hard things, especially when our imposter syndrome is telling us to give up. Again, our members represent these qualities every day.
There is no room for cynicism or wasting time asking for a seat at the table. The work is too important, the opportunity too great. We have to build our own table.
If we’re honest, our safety, our belonging, and our economic future have always come from each other, including from the networks we build, the coalitions we form, and the courage to imagine what’s possible beyond the status quo.
That’s been on my mind as we continue building 1000 Queer Businesses Strong.
When I look at our members, our partners, and the people across Alberta who are stepping into this work with us, what I see isn’t nostalgia at all. What I see is a community actively building the kind of province we want to live in.Nostalgia is not a strategy but proactively building a progressive, inclusive economy together absolutely is.
If you’re feeling inspired to be part of our 1000 Queer Businesses Strong movement (allies welcome), here are some actions you can take right now:
- Introduce the Alberta 2SLGBTQI+ Chamber of Commerce and 1000 Queer Businesses Strong to a business owner, community leader, or passionate individual who you think can help with our mission. Here is a draft email you can use to make it easier for you! Don’t forget to change the “To”!
- Donate to help us build the education, programming and research to help current and future queer and trans entrepreneurs thrive. If you can’t but know folks who might be able to support, we’d love an introduction!
- Post about 1000 Queer Businesses Strong on social media and tag folks who you think we need to connect with. Here is a link to our instagram content you can pull from!
- If you’re interested in partnering with us but don’t know how, reach out and let’s chat: info@ab-lgbt.com.
In solidarity,
Elli McDine (She/Her)Executive Director
