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What is a place made of? People, first and foremost. In a global, multipolar economy, human capital matters more than ever.
Acutely aware of this, Manitoba government officials are in the process of repositioning the province accordingly:
As waves of immigrants from the developing world remade Canada a decade ago, the famously friendly people of Manitoba could not contain their pique....
What irked them was not the Babel of tongues, the billions spent on health care and social services, or the explosion of ethnic identities. The rub was the newcomers’ preference for “M.T.V.” — Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver — over the humble prairie province north of North Dakota, which coveted workers and population growth.
Demanding “our fair share,” Manitobans did something hard to imagine in American politics, where concern over illegal immigrants dominates public debate and states seek more power to keep them out. In Canada, which has little illegal immigration, Manitoba won new power to bring foreigners in, handpicking ethnic and occupational groups judged most likely to stay.
This experiment in designer immigration has made Winnipeg a hub of parka-clad diversity — a blue-collar town that gripes about the cold in Punjabi and Tagalog — and has defied the anti-immigrant backlash seen in much of the world.
Below, a video promotes Manitoba as the ideal destination for the skilled workers it wishes to attract. The province's strides underline the potentials of strong place branding in a global competition for talent. Moreover, the effort itself refashions the place as somewhere in the process of becoming, interested in reinvention, and open to change. In other words, the policy impacts the branding, and vice versa.
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