It was early 2023 when I joined WeBA. At that time, I had started my own insurance brokerage in a little industrial office space near 182nd Street and 106 Avenue with three employees; me myself and I. At that time, I wanted to grow my business network and learn from other entrepreneurs; what worked, what didn’t work and hopefully find some more ways I could be success and ideally avoid common business problems.
Soon I was brought in with the opportunity to serve as the vice president, where I learned about WeBA and board governance, and got to meet my fellow directors. When I became president, I had several goals, but everything centered mostly around one question;
What is the value a business gains by becoming a WeBA member?
To better answer this question, we as a board achieved several things during my tenure;
1. We got WeBA added to the list of business associations assisting with collection of data during annual business census (every association was listed except for us)
2. We have increased the standard discount for WeBA members to attend our mixer events
3. We did active engagement with City Councilors that represent our wards (Thu Parmar and Reid Clarke), with planned events to follow next year for direct membership advocacy opportunities.
4. Continued relationship with our provincial and federal representatives, with some possible events scheduled in the future (Lorne Dach, Kelly McCauley, Billy Morin)
5. Successfully brought back the Mayors Luncheon after a few year hiatus, with commitment for 2027 already scheduled
6. Provided feedback in the budget engagement for 2026-2027 with the Chamber of Commerce.
7. Tentatively secured a working relationship with the Chamber of Commerce in an effort to increase impact of advocacy (thank you Crystal)
During these efforts, we as a board found many areas where we required some procedural change and often thought to ourselves “what was the way that we did this in the past?” without considering that that may not be the best path going forwards. We ran into issues regarding technologies, banking services, mailboxes, membership management software and others and through the best efforts of our board of directors were able to pave way into a streamlined operating system going forward into the 2026-2027 term.
The City of Edmonton are dealing with major issues regarding affordability and spending, which creates issues for the business community as they come to us looking for funding what appears to be “another ongoing project or initiative”. They are aware of their “anti-business” reputation and appear to be attempting to remedy this; during my engagement with the City, we had one small example, where infrastructure projects seem to be moving toward an “IPD” model; which will align the city along with the businesses responsible for delivering these projects on time and on budget. However, the business community is aware that they share a disproportionate rate of taxation of almost 3X, and it is my opinion that this will continue to get worse.
Looking forward, the business environment continues to change with new challenges and opportunities.
Even since 2023, WeBA has changed drastically; many of our larger founding businesses have either sold to another company or unfortunately gone out of business. I myself, have sold my business to be part of a larger organization. Apart from the annual golf tournament. many of our events during the year were mostly attended by non-members, so we are looking for more ways to bring existing members out to our events during the year.
Similar to how the business community is always evolving, we will continue to engage membership to improve WeBA’s offerings and look for new businesses to join us as we strengthen our value proposition.
Our duty remains with the membership to continue to provide a forum for shared interests of the west Edmonton business community.
I wanted to thank the 2025-2026 board for their efforts; we have really set up WeBA for a great year next year and into the future and I am excited to see where this organization goes from here.
Thank you,
Curtis Luu