Small business owners in Prince George and across Northern BC are navigating through some murky waters as many are facing an uncertain future.
A survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business states optimism fell by less than 0.2 points in August bringing the provincial rating to 55.9 – well below the National Index rating of 61.9.
Index levels between 65 and 75 mean the province’s economy is growing at its potential.
Small business should be a vital part of Civic Election platforms according to Economist Muriel Protzer.
“Some of those pillars include action items like red tape, introducing fairer property tax measures and also one of our main pillars is that we are advocating for municipalities to limit their local spending.”
“From those pillars that I was speaking to earlier include reducing the red tape and making sure that local websites are easy to navigate and that when businesses or citizens of the same sort of reaching out to local city halls, making sure they’re questions are being answered, making sure they’re paperwork and applications aren’t being riddled with jargon or unreasonable or lengthy or cumbersome terms and it’s those concerns that can make an impact on small business confidence.”
The highest small business optimism ratings for August belonged to Prince Edward Island (74.0), Quebec (72) and, Nova Scotia (67).
The CFIB also has a possible solution to the impending Employer’s Health Tax that is scheduled to begin on January 1st, putting a further strain on northern businesses.
“One thing for sure that the provincial government could look at doing is not having that double dip so while they’re phasing out the medical service premiums, wait until those are completely phased out before introducing the Employer Health Tax.”
“The new tax is causing them significant concern and there’s still a lot of uncertainty on how business owners are going to observe this new cost – many of our members have reached out to us and have said this is an entirely new cost for them, being able to mitigate this cost and to make sure they are not hurting jobs while adjusting to this new policy is going to be a difficult time.”
Forty-three percent of business owners in the province described the health of their business as “good” while nine percent of entrepreneurs said the health of their business was bad during the month of August.