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BC
Economy
Historically, British Columbia’s was essentially resource-based. Many natural resources attracted European colonization, including sea otter, beaver, salmon, timber, gold and coal. As urban centers expanded in the southwest of the province, service and manufacturing sectors developed.
Today, with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and low Canadian exchange rate, the province’s economy has become intimately linked to America’s. Increases in trade have also allowed greater urbanization, and growing manufacturing and service sectors, increasing economic diversification and making the province less susceptible to fluctuating natural resource markets. Still, half of the province’s production of goods is based on domestic natural resource extraction. In 2001, the agriculture, fishing, forestry and mining sectors produced 78 percent of total exports, down from 88 percent ten years previous.
For related information, please see our pages BC
Forestry, BC Fishing,
BC Mining, BC
Agriculture and BC History.
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