Western Standard - April 12, 2024


Calgary Lougheed MLA Eric Bouchard on what COVID restrictions did to small businesses & how they are


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

170.05408

Word count

608

Sentence count

30


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the Western Standard Podcast, I sit down with the CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce to talk about the impact of government policies that were introduced in the late 2000s and early 2010s on Canadian small businesses.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I mean, the only business I see booming is dollar stores.
00:00:02.000 Boy, they're springing up everywhere.
00:00:03.860 Good on them.
00:00:04.880 But it's because people can't afford to shop anywhere else.
00:00:07.780 No, it's so true.
00:00:09.100 And I've, you know, I feel all levels of government.
00:00:12.860 The people who were in charge, I guess, you know, from the advocacy for small business,
00:00:21.240 which should have been there in 2020 and 2021, wasn't there.
00:00:25.900 You know, they, in my opinion, you know, I believe it was the, I'll get a direct quote
00:00:31.540 from the president of the chamber, Calgary Chamber of Commerce.
00:00:36.100 You know, they're, they're, they say they exist to help businesses reach their potential.
00:00:40.640 And as an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan, nonpartisan organization, they build their
00:00:45.760 history to serve and advocate for business of all sizes and all sectors across the country.
00:00:50.480 And I'm going back to, uh, would have been 2021, uh, the president of the Calgary Chamber
00:00:57.100 of Commerce, you know, uh, her comments were today's announcement on the immediate removal
00:01:01.680 of all pandemic measures and restrictions ignores the importance of consumer confidence in our
00:01:07.380 economy recovery.
00:01:09.040 You know, like put that in perspective.
00:01:11.180 Well, their, their role was to represent businesses, you know, clearly veering out of, out of their
00:01:21.260 lane.
00:01:22.080 Yeah.
00:01:22.320 And just for, for context, that's Deborah Yedlin.
00:01:24.440 And I've written a couple of columns ripping into her for that in particular, I was furious
00:01:30.140 because I mean, no matter where you stand on things, if you know anything about business,
00:01:34.820 that those restrictions were harming businesses.
00:01:38.680 They were slowing people down from coming into them.
00:01:40.880 It was limiting the amount of people who could dine there, who could work there, that the
00:01:44.140 vaccine passports were reducing your customer base, uh, again, to come out and say that
00:01:49.700 it would be bad for business to lift those restrictions was completely absurd.
00:01:53.620 And, uh, contrary to what any person in business would have told otherwise, yet she's still heading
00:01:58.340 that chamber of commerce today.
00:01:59.560 And, and, uh, the Western standard, just as a side note, before I let you go, we're a member
00:02:04.480 of the Strathmore chamber of commerce, cause we just don't want to waste our time and money
00:02:08.020 on the Calgary one.
00:02:09.020 Cause it's just the chamber of woke.
00:02:10.280 Yeah, no, so, so fair.
00:02:12.840 Uh, I appreciate that too.
00:02:14.620 Uh, I, yeah, just for another, I used, um, media corporate media, I believe it was 2017
00:02:21.580 or 2018 when times were tough, you know, the NDP government, uh, there's oil recession.
00:02:27.640 I used one of the corporate media to get my message out, how small businesses were affected,
00:02:33.980 uh, 2020, late 2020, I had reached out to all corporate media and I won't name them all
00:02:41.700 here, but, uh, each one responded saying that they weren't interested in telling my story
00:02:47.740 at the time.
00:02:48.460 And I was, you know, wasn't waving the white flag just yet, but there was a tsunami coming
00:02:56.180 of small businesses and we haven't, we haven't even scratched the surface.
00:02:59.900 I don't think of, you know, bankruptcies, insolvencies, uh, we could go on talking about
00:03:06.260 mental health issues and how, you know, small business owners are proud people as you know,
00:03:12.860 they should be.
00:03:13.960 But, you know, when you, you have to put up this facade for your staff, for your family,
00:03:19.920 and just to keep the sense that everything is okay, you know, and there, that guy can
00:03:24.900 speak personally to that.
00:03:25.980 There's, there's a mental, mental toll to that.
00:03:28.780 You can become a Western standard member for just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited access.