Lessons from Main Streets: How Are Local Businesses Navigating Economic Uncertainty?

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to citytalk@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Lessons from Main Streets: How Are Local Businesses Navigating Economic Uncertainty?

City Talk, April 3, 2025

Mary W. Rowe Hi, it’s Mary Rowe from CityTalk. I happen to be, as you can hear, a little discombobulated because I’m jet-lagged, because I’m here in Vancouver, where I’m speaking this afternoon at the downtown Vancouver BIA, downtown Van. There’s a GM this afternoon looking forward to joining many, many folks to talk about the state of our downtowns across the country, and specifically for us to learn more about what’s happening in Vancouver. We’ll put into the chat the downtown Van report, it releases today, and I’m here to be part of that. So, welcome to “liberation day” plus one. It’s a very interesting moment that we’re experiencing here in Canada. I’m sure everyone’s going to core us in on this and give us their own perspectives about how it feels to be in the crosshairs. And I’m very pleased to have some smart folks coming on the call today to talk about the very particular effects and impacts that they’re starting to see around economic uncertainty and how it affects main streets. And as I said, I’m in Vancouver, which is the traditional territory of the Squamish and the Musqueam. And as people know, familiar with CityTalk, we always try to come from a place of respect and understanding about our obligation to ancestral relationships is. And Main Streets are an interesting form, a topography that actually is part of the indigenous culture. And I’ll be interested to hear if there are indigenous participants in the audience who want to comment on that, because… It’s one of the reasons that we chose Main Streets, was we felt it was a concept, a unit of analysis that would resonate with people in different sizes of communities, coming from different backgrounds, different cultural traditions, different kinds of experiences of urban form. And that’s why we’ve kind of zeroed in on it. So, and we’re interested, as everyone has, if you’re a steady listener to CityTalk, you know that we continue to emphasize that the economy lands in places. It’s so much of our discourse is around sectors and around the automotive sector, yes, the oil and gas sector, yes, the agricultural sector, yes, and what we’re always trying to suggest is actually the economy is organized around places. And that’s why the Main Street lens is so valuable. So just to do a little slightly different format this time for CityTalk, I’ve asked some of our colleagues to come on and share with you what Main Street Canada, which we launched last week. What Main Street Canada is starting to look like and how we are hoping this will be a kind of frame of reference, a unit of analysis. We hope a unit investment, that the public… The private sector are already invested in Main Streets, what we’re hoping is that the public sector will start to recognize that as well. And that this is where you actually can have an impact and a difference to people’s lives and communities. So, I’m going to ask my colleague Ananmay to come on and to talk, walk us through if you would Ananmay, what Main Street Canada looks like. And we’re just going to have a bit of a little show and tell. And everybody that can go to it, go to MainStreetCanada.ca, you’ll have a look. But Ananmay is going to walk you through a little bit about what this tool looks like, and then we have some invited guests to talk specifically about their experiences on Main Streets. So over to you, Ananmay, welcome to CityTalk.

Ananmay Sharan Thank you, Mary, everybody. I’m Ananmay Sharan, I’m a data analyst here at the CUI. Just going to share my screen. As Mary mentioned, you can go to Mainstreetcanada.ca and you’ll be taken to this lovely landing page. And there’s a bunch of content all across the site. I won’t go into all of it, feel free to explore it on your own time. But as you can see, we have some quick stats showing just how important main streets are to Canadian communities across the country. Given that tariffs are top of mind, one of the things we’ve been working on developing is this tariff impact tracker, which I’m going to show over here. This is a tracker mostly focused on the regional level for now, because we were pulling this together in a short amount of time with publicly available data. But as we’re thinking about, you know, this sort of uncertain economic landscape with prices increasing, potential job losses leading to, you know, sort of retail sales falling and potential uncertainty in investment, or investment being put on pause or on hold. These are kind of nine key variables that we’re trying to track across the country. So… across three categories of jobs and businesses, prices and consumer spending and investment. We have these variables at the CMA level for about 50 regions all across the country, and if you go to the tariff tracker from the Main Street Canada website, you can go and sort of select whichever region you’re most interested in, and then the variables will populate and you can see sort of month-to-month change and year to year change if you would like. We find that these metrics usually update sort of on a one to three month timeline, so we try to keep this as updated as possible. Some of the metrics, you can see are for March of 2025, some of them are lagging a little bit further behind, but as these tariff impacts start to hit, we’ll be able to see sort of over time the true impact, or the impact on the regional level at least. I’ll go into the second tab quickly to see that specific trend over time. Each of those specific variables, you can go in and sort of select a variable that you’re interested in, go in, and select the specific date range, specific regions that you want to see, and be able to download this data pretty quickly as well. And then finally, we also have a map, which shows, again, a super high regional level, sort of these variables and the changes month over month, as Mary was talking about the impact of, the importance of place is very key, so we wanted to be able to view that geographically. Obviously, these are at the regional level but we are obviously very interested in working at the main street scale, and we’re working on methodologies to sort of track impact of not just tariffs, but track main street sort of scale geographies analytically. I’m just going to quickly share a dashboard that we’ve been working on that shows some of this type of analysis. This is measuring visitor levels, as well as some other categories of variables that we at the CUI are really working on developing, both as an approach and as a product to be able to do this analysis really well at the main street scale, so, thinking about regions, thinking about sort of bigger issues, but obviously trying to really hone in and measure things at the Main Street scale as well. So you can see, I’m going to quickly just show the visuals. We have a lot of data and we’re building up a lot of expertise and being able to do this kind of analysis quite quickly and quite well at Main Street geographies across the country. And if you’re interested in exploring more of that, there is a section on the Main Street Canada website which talks specifically about these sort of Main Street data dashboards, and you can reach out to us and and talk about what we can do there. But yeah, I just wanted to quickly share the tariff tracker as well as MainStreetCanada.ca. There’s a ton of other content on the site, you know, talking about what action cities are taking, the actions CUI’s taken, the various programs we have, so feel free to explore and if there’s any questions feel free to reach out to us.

Mary W. Rowe Thanks, Ananmay and thanks everybody. This is very much a work in progress, folks. We want it to be as good as we can make it. And so, Ananmay, I think part of the lesson that we’re learning is that we can secure data around the impact of tariffs. It’s going to take time to be able to see it. And we sort of use tariffs as a proxy for economic uncertainty. So, whether there are tariffs or not, or whether it’s a 10 or 25 or 65 or whatever, the idea that we’ve been put into a position now where it’s uncertain. We have uncertain economic conditions. And Ananmay, am I right that the data that we have now can take us to what is known as a central metropolitan area, a CMA, right? Don’t have it as granular as we would like to have it, although in some instances you do, right?

Ananmay Sharan Yes, we are constantly working on trying to get data, you know, at the smallest scale possible, but in order to get sort of nationwide data, usually through Statistics Canada, or other providers, the regional or CME scale is what we have for now.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, yeah. And again, this is, I’m just going to put a call out to everybody to recognize that this is the challenge we’ve got, folks. We get… The country collects data at certain scales and we’re always trying to tease out, tease out, tease out. Can we get it more local? Can we get more local? And I see, we have many, many folks on the call whether they’re from business improvement areas or local economics agencies in their cities. And I know you live, like us, with the restrictions that we have on what data we can find. So, that’s what I’m getting at. We’re going to try to build this and make it more and more specific, and more and detailed as we go. So please, spend some time when the sessions over, go and look at Main Street Canada, and then just bombard us with your suggestions about how to make this more useful and better. And we’re going to to try to continue to raise resources to be able to get that kind of granular data, so that we can really pinpoint what’s going on. And in that way, the tariff discussion the pressure that tariffs is putting on the Canadian economy is really an excuse for us to force ourselves to start looking at the economy in places at this level of specificity. It’s forcing us to do that and that’s a good thing. Ananmay, thanks for joining us. I hope you’ll stay on and listen. And then if there are questions, you can respond to them in the chat. And I’ll see you when I get back to Toronto. Okay, so. As I suggested, you know, yesterday was an interesting day. I was trying to watch the press event in an airport lounge. So I didn’t get as much detail as I would have liked. And then I tried to read as much as I could. I’m sure there are lots of folks here on the call that have done a much deeper dive and a much more sophisticated analysis than I’ve been able to do so far. So I’m looking forward to hearing from folks in the chat, what you’re observing, what you think the implications are for your particular piece of the world and how you think it’s affecting your local economy. But fortunately, joining us today, we’ve got people from across the country who are engaged in supporting main streets and main street economies in various ways. And I want to go to Nancy first. Come on on, Nancy, because Nancy is ostensibly in one of the epicenters that is predicted  to absorb some of the biggest impacts of tariffs or no tariffs. And I think, again, on the chat, I’m interested for people to give us anecdotally, what are you seeing? Because we recognize that lots of Main Street businesses may not be in the export business. And so they may have mostly local customers. And so the tariffs that would be applied to us from the United States may not affect them because they don’t have that much, good, people are putting stuff into the chat, thank you. It may not effect you because you’re not selling to American customers. But we know that you are buying from, you’re supplying and putting products in your stores from American customers. And so, what does that mean? And what is the sort of cycle that we’re entering into here. Nancy, give us your perspective because you have a very, I was about to do that double qualifier, very unique. You have a unique situation. So welcome to CityTalk. We’re very glad to have you on. And just give people a picture of what the reality is in St. John.

Nancy Tissington Well sure. And we are unique because we’re uptown. I know it’s usually main streets in downtown, and we’re uptown, so I did notice Nicholas on there from another BIA. The interesting thing is we have a large port here and we have, you know, lumber, aquaculture, oil, those are all our export, and you kind of say “okay what is going to happen with this and do we know”, but we know this, that there has been an advanced job loss, contracts that have not been resigned. And so, when you see job loss, then you’re going to see a decline in your growth that we just had because they may be seeking, you know, positions in other cities. So, you know, that trickle-down may not happen right away, but certainly that’s sort of that gloomy thing that I think about, because we’re very fortunate in the uptown. We have a huge densification population rate in our uptown that supports us. We found that out during the pandemic. We found out that the locals really do step up and they do, you know, I mean we lost our cruise ships during those two years, and we still manage to stay afloat. So from my perspective right now, it’s a wait and see as to these small businesses. I will say this, that I like Mary, that you talk about instead of sectors because this is where we live, places. So the place making, we’re actually almost competing at this point. When I talk, when we hear about visitors traveling across Canada this year, which city are they going to visit? So I feel like we’re in a competition between, you know, some of our larger cities. How are we going to get them here? Some of that placemaking that we do. We do know this, the consumer behavior, people are on, if you look on any of your local Facebook groups, we’re talking about where can I get this as Canadian, right down to their dish soap and their celery. You know, those types of things. So we’re hyper vigilant about that. So are the businesses. I had a talk with one recently, Notions, they have knitting and such. And they were talking about, I have a clean store Nancy, and I’m like, what are we talking about? A clean store? And she goes, “well now I’m buying everything from manufacturers that are Canadian, or outside of the U.S”. So, because they know that consumers are becoming hyper fixated on buying that, but they also want to support the local businesses. So, from our perspective as a BIA, of course we’re always here talking about helping businesses thrive, to continue to thrive. We see a huge nighttime economy here, still thriving. So we’re happy about that. We have about 72 restaurants, about 76 reach. One of the groundswells that we always find is, how do we know they’re all one-offs in each of their stores? How do we bring that groundswell together, that they know they are being supported by us as a BIA, as a part of our mandate. And how do we get the conversation going about continuing to support local using tools like LoveLocal to win contests that’s coming back on, some of these tools that are in my kit box. Local is Uptown St. John. So we’ve got wonderful people talking right now with, you know, putting stickers in their windows, posters in their windows, buttons on them to say, hey, welcome to the Americans that are coming, 77 cruise ships coming in, welcome, we’ll take your money anyways. And I think for me, we’re just sort of waiting on that small business effect, but I do see some stores combining, maybe taking a space that’s for two, instead of just one-offs, and looking to cross-promote with one another. You know, one thing that this has done to our country, everyone has seen this and I’ve talked to many people about our Canadian flag and the patriotism that’s come up. So I’m looking to the positive on that. And to that note, I’m going to end with this, Mary, not to keep everybody going, but we, we actually have a heart, which of course is the heart, the center of our city.

Mary W. Rowe Put it up in the centre, we didn’t quite get it. Put it up in the centre.

Nancy Tissington  We’ve got a heart. Of course. Right. And with that heart, we just decided to add the Canadian flag in there to show some more patriotism. There’s been quite a  groundswell with this campaign that we’ve done. And we’re just noting that people are coming on and sharing their story as to why they’re a small business and why we need to continue to support small business. It is the purest form of economic development, when it comes to our BIAs taking funds from them and then coming back out and promoting them. So, again, I’m not sure, the corporation side of things I’ve been watching as to you, Mary, I was traveling yesterday, catching a little bit in one of the lounges, and I’ll have some catching up to do today, but I’ll probably lean in hard on the small businesses and find out what’s being affected by them.

Mary W. Rowe I’m interested in your comment about the purest form of economic development. I, you know, I think that part of the messaging I feel we try to advance here at CUI and through Main Street, this new initiative, Main Street Canada, is to just reinforce with people that you have, you have agency. You know, when you’re faced with these, I just can’t get over how existential has become a common word in everyone’s vocabulary, and I don’t really know what it means, but, what we’re saying is you feel, “Oh, there’s stuff going on. I don’t have any control over.” Well, one of the things you do have control over is you do a control over where you walk, where you drive, where you travel to, where you spend your money, where you meet your friends and all these things. And that’s why I feel that mainstream emphasis, it’s an economic emphasis, but it’s also a social emphasis and an environmental emphasis, right? So it’s… And so I appreciate what you said. The purest form of economic development is how you spend your money.

Nancy Tissington Absolutely.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, and the other point on Main Street Canada that we’re making is that, you know, a big chunk of the Canadian population works in the small and medium enterprise sector, and a big chunk of those businesses are attached in some way to a main street, so just to start paying attention to that focus piece. I’m interested about the cruise ships Nancy, we had a bit of a chat about this, you and I, when I first met you because you were trying to make the point, and I appreciate that because I’m here in Vancouver and I’m reading downtown Van’s annual report. I hope someone will put that into the chat so you can see what the downtown Van people are reporting, but they also… have a very robust tourist economy. And so, and a lot of those tourists are Americans. And so, how do we thread this needle about being proud of being Canadian and being proud of trying to support Canadian business, but at the same time being hospitable to Americans who have been our customers, and our friends, and our family members forever.

Nancy Tissington It’s very, it is tricky because, and I’m kind of saying, I think Canadians, I think we’ll be welcoming them, once we get the vibe back on the street, and they’re here, I think nobody will notice. No one’s saying  “You’re this, you’re this, you’re this”, I think the groundswell, I’m hoping that’s going to be, I know hope is not a strategy, but I just think that Canadians are kind. Listen, they’re here. They’ve chosen us to come and visit. They have money. They have a little extra money because the dollar’s stronger on their side. And, you know, we have very specific destinations that people actually do come in to buy from, so, you know, I think that also actually helps too with, when they were gone we noticed it, in the pandemic it was really hollowed out here, it didn’t feel great. I mean we have a lot of, you know, residents, but it’s nice to have the vibe back  of those folks, and I think that the businesses will eventually, after the first couple of cruise ships, I think that fear will go away.

Mary W. Rowe I think hope is a strategy. It’s not. It is. Let’s make it a strategy, I’m with you. All right, Olivier, can you come on in and join us? Nancy, we’ll come back to you. And lots of people in the chat putting stuff in. I appreciate this. We always have a very active chat. Just reminding people to toggle your options so that your comments go to everyone. Otherwise, they just go to the panelists and me. We’re happy to hear from you, but it’d be better if you talk to everyone, Olivier. Hello. Hello, La Belle Provence. Lots of conversation going on in Quebec, I know. Talk to us a little bit about what you’re observing, and I think you should tell people a little about Rue Principale and the work that you do.

Olivier Legault Yeah, well, thank you, Mary. It’s really great to be here. And it’s great to reunite with CUI and see Main Street Canada coming up. And I have Jacqueline and Emily in Montreal. It really helps creating links between us. So, Rue Principal, which is Main Street, is operating in Quebec for 40 years now. And we have members all over Quebec and New Brunswick. So mostly French-speaking communities. And so, we have these members, we help building strategies to revitalize the downtowns and main streets. And then we also have a research department where we try to be like, you know, on the sharp edge of knowledge. So this is basically what we do. And of course, what we see is basically like, to get the tariff thing going, is short-term help and bi-local campaign. And the perspective I want to bring here is, you know, we can learn from different crises, of course. And we have to build on the resiliency of our downtowns and main streets. And when we try to learn from COVID, well, the main streets that have the better health, or were able to be resilient the most, are the main streets which have a critical mass of consumers living nearby. So, you know, we’re anchored in a community, in the neighborhood that has a critical mass of consumers that were able to support their businesses. So the main streets that were relying on the workers, or recreational purposes, like a little centre where you go to get brunch, well, they did less good. And of course, the touristic hubs did great, especially those who were outside of the bigger centers. And what we can learn from COVID, also, is that the localism and the bi-local thing went out as quickly as it came. So it’s really a short-term trend that maybe we’ll see. Maybe it’s going to be longer this time because the patriotism that’s evolving. So basically, what I wanna bring here is, let’s not forget and let’s keep our efforts to build resilient downtowns and main streets. So we’re talking more midterm and long-term strategies. But we have to keep smartly densifying our town centers in order to have this habited neighbourhood. What we see here is municipalities that try to have more control on the real estate development, that want to have their hands and they want to be part of it. And what we see also is taking some of this real estate out of the market in order to have affordable housing, in order to have social economy and businesses that provides the basic needs to have this neighbourhood, this complete neighbourhood thing, and to have the cultural vibrancy also, that keeps in the downtown area and to be protected from the gentrification. So basically what we, it’s time to regroup. It’s time to stay focused on the fundamentals that will keep our main street and downtowns vibrant, even if it’s important to have short-term help, and it’s important to have these bi-local campaigns. But, if we want to stay resilient for the next crisis that will come, well, we have to re-group around our town centres because this is our main streets and downtowns that are in the intersection of building their community’s identity to have carbon sober and complete neighborhoods. And this is where we can have also, property tax optimization. So if we’re able, as towns and municipalities, to optimize our revenues, when there’s a crisis, then we will be able to have short-term help. So, we have to work on that business model and be really like, pioneers of real estate control for public interest needs.

Mary W. Rowe We do honestly. I love that real estate control for public interest needs. Listen, you and Nancy are just coming out with the best short, pithy statements. I know that our staff are going to go crazy trying to pull out little bits of what you just said. Olivia, it’s interesting that Rue Principale is about the same age as the Canadian Urban Institute. You’re a little older if you’re 40 years old, we’re 35 years old. Yeah, but it’s interesting, isn’t it, that we’ve instinctively known that we need to be focusing on local capacity, and that these organizations form up. And it’s always interesting, I think, to look at urbanism in Quebec, in cities in Quebec, because they have their own characteristics. They are, the main streets look, have a certain kind of character, as you know, and that’s true across the country. They vary across the county, but there’s still this common unit that exists, that we obviously have a human impulse. We want to have a relationship with our neighbors. And I love the idea of the intersection, you used that phrase, it’s the intersection of economic, and environmental, and cultural, but it’s also physically an intersection. It’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s the way we’ve built our communities. And also that they’re centres of resilience. I appreciate all of that, Olivier. So I’m looking forward to having our colleagues join on those themes. Let’s keep going west, kind of northwest, to Nicholas. Nicholas, come into us now from the Sault, and talk to us about, again, the particular kinds of things that you’re being sensitive to and the kinds of expressions that you are seeing. I was interested, Nancy talked about office space, sorry, commercial spaces starting to combine, retail sharing spaces. I know that in Northern communities across the country, main streets have particular sets of challenges. It’s true in Northern Ontario. Give us a little bit of a picture of what you’re looking at and the kind of innovative things you guys are starting to talk about.

Nicholas Luck Thank you, Mary. And I guess to canon some things that Nancy was talking about, as well as Olivier. Yeah, I guess they give a picture, I guess, even on more of a social lens, you know, we’re a border town, the twin zoos. So there’s Sault St. Marie, Michigan, Sault St. Marie, Ontario. So, there’s very close connections, even so close, many people I know are actually married to somebody across the border. So all of these…

Mary W. Rowe They actually, you mean they live in separate countries and they’re married?

Nicholas Luck Yeah, that’s right.

Mary W. Rowe That’s my kind of marriage, just saying, okay …

Nicholas Luck Well, you know, obviously extended families here or there, right? So, a lot of the tariff talk, and all this, and accusations on countries, has definitely caused a cultural and social schisms. When we’ve been very close knit for many, many years. I think at one point we were amalgamated as one town. This is, you know, hundreds of years ago.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nicholas Luck But yeah, so then more on the present landscape. So yeah, the tariffs will definitely have a direct impact. I mean, according to our chamber of commerce in the Algoma region, there’s 3000 jobs or 3000 businesses in the manufacturing sector. The big players is Algoma Steel and Tenaris. So 25% tariffs on aluminum and steel will definitely have an impact, and 50% of that steel goes to U.S. markets. So, we’re definitely going to be expecting an impact. We’ve been through this before, back in 2018, but I think this is going to be a little more significant. Obviously that trickles down to our Main Street businesses. We’re also seeing bridge crossings drop as well. So a lot of Americans that were coming over here, either to visit our businesses according to data from our BRNE from our businesses, that’s 10% of the market. So it’s not huge, but still has an impact. You know, and then obviously there’s still impacts from the pandemic, high insurance costs related to crime, mental health and addictions, infrastructure impacts, and you know, there’s going to be, you know, operating costs are going to rise.

Mary W. Rowe I mean, that’s the thing, as you suggested, it’s not just that you may or may not have American customers, it’s that your customers have other costs that are going up that affect their disposable income to then spend money along your main street, right?

Nicholas Luck Yes, absolutely. I know they’ve gotten inflation down, but this could be a new inflation. And, you know, and you think about equipment and where the Sault is located. We’re about the same distance to Chicago as we are to Toronto. And then, you know, we’re closer to Chicago than Winnipeg. And with that, so if you’re a small business, a lot of your suppliers are from the US. So that is going to, obviously, they’re going to have to transfer those costs. Either they’re going to have to eat it or transfer that to the consumer. So that’s something small businesses are going to pivot from. You know, I’d say some ways to mitigate those costs is those business to business collaborations. So, that’s not only just doing you know joint promotions or events together these close businesses along Main Street, but also business to business collaborations in terms of shared buying power. So say a bunch of restaurants, they want to source their packaging for takeout from a Canadian supplier. And the cost may be more to transfer to a Canadian supplier as opposed to  an American, but say they organize together, and then they can negotiate a better deal in bulk. And I mean, that’s less risk for the supplier. So trying to encourage that to mainstream businesses because again, they don’t have that buying power as a big box store, or things like that. So, it’s just building that capacity and working together to reduce some of these costs. As well, in continuing to promote like, in solidarity with the Ontario Business Improvement Area Association, in the shop, Main Street Canada initiative. We pushed that here as well. Just making it really, something that we should have been doing ongoing, right? And then again, as we all know, this is continuing to develop local supply chains and we’ll be resilient to any, well, hopefully any crisis in the future because it seems like it doesn’t stop, with something new every day.

Mary W. Rowe You know, I want to come back to some of these things, like the notion of procurement, that you can do shared procurement. Again, these are things that we probably, you know, there’s no reason we couldn’t have been doing this before, but this sort of compels you to do it. So, can you get the price down for inputs if you do share procurement? And then this idea of “are we looking at our supply chains and how they can be adjusted?” Thanks, Nicholas, I’ll come back to you. I’m going to go now finally to Rylan, who’s joining, I think for his first CityTalk. Hi Rylan, we’re getting lots of questions in the chat about the built environment, and what are the sort of tools or levers that are available to us around zoning and planning that could be tweaked, altered to support local economies and support mainstream businesses. So give us a bit of a perspective from you. I know you’re in Prince George, we’re on the same time zone for a change, but this is your particular vantage, I know, is to look at the sort of enabling conditions for the economy at this scale. Welcome to CityTalk and happy to hear what you have to think, and then we’ll put everybody’s camera on and we’ll have an open chat. Go ahead.

Rylan Graham Yeah, excellent. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, you know, as an academic, my sort of role is an observer and researcher, and a lot of my work does focus on on downtowns in, you know, smaller and mid-sized cities and particularly in western Canada. So I’m based in Prince George, which is in northern BC. And, you know, when I hear the other panelists and yourself talking about some of the challenges that main streets are facing. You know, to me, this is this is just one more thing that downtown’s are having to deal with, you know, another challenge. I mean, for decades, downtown’s have had to be resilient to the forces of suburbanization, which have chipped away at the function of downtown, you know, more recently, the impacts of the pandemic. And, you know, concurrently to what we’re talking about today in numerous mid-sized and larger cities, they’re also dealing with the loss of the bay, which is a major retailer.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, we haven’t, you are the first person to mention it. But that is a, it’s an anchor. It was a partial anchor.

Rylan Graham Right, absolutely. So, you know, again, this is just one more challenge layered on top of a slate of existing challenges. So, and again, as someone who kind of works across this province, it’s a bit of a mixed bag here. I mean, certainly you’re in Vancouver, and you see downtown Vancouver is a thriving neighbourhood, but that’s not necessarily the case everywhere here in B.C. or in downtowns across this country. And another example, I think, is Kelowna, which, right now is booming. Undergoing a rapid evolution, the downtown that is, you know, there are growing pains for sure, but it’s generally what I think is evolving into sort of a more dynamic and vibrant community. But, you know, I heard Nancy mentioning the tourists coming to Saint John and Kelowna certainly enjoys it the same way, not cruise ships per se, but they enjoy an influx of tourists. But, you know, here in Prince George we don’t necessarily have that the same So.

Mary W. Rowe Why is Kelowna booming?

Rylan Graham A lot of young people moving there, moving from the lower mainland into the Okanagan. Yeah, traditionally it was more affordable, although that’s changing very rapidly. I mean, good weather, beautiful scenery. So it seems to have these pull factors that are bringing people in. So the downtown is…

Mary W. Rowe Rylan, what’s your… Sorry, you finish on Kelowna.

Rylan Graham No, no, that’s, please go ahead.

Mary W. Rowe I was going to ask you about property tax, because we’re getting asked questions about this in the chat. Property tax is a kind of third rail of municipal finance, I know. Thoughts on how we could alter property tax to give independent businesses and mainstream businesses some kind of a break?

Rylan Graham Yeah, I’m not sure, but I think on that same thread, I do think that municipalities need to get more intentional about how they are supporting businesses and how they are supporting downtown revitalization. You know, I think if we open up any downtown plan in a municipality in Canada, there’s some really exciting, bold visions, but what at least planning has been challenged with for a long time is the implementation piece. And so I think in addition to property taxes, I think just, what municipalities need to be doing is getting more creative with the levers that they have to…

Mary W. Rowe What do you think they are?

Rylan Graham What do I think they are in terms of levers? Well, I think in B.C., one of the big things happening right now is, you know, you mentioned at the onset, there is the changing of regulations, right? Changing zoning regulations to enable development around maybe, particularly main streets. I mean, downtowns have always had pretty permissible regulations, but maybe around main streets, neighbourhood commercial streets, you know, liberalizing zoning will free up the ability to develop the sort of things that we want to see happen. Again, that are in our plans but maybe our zoning doesn’t necessarily align with. So again, you know, there’s a mixed bag in terms of our downtowns and main streets of what’s happening and what I’d like to see is, yeah municipalities get more intentional with how do we actually start to enable some of these changes that we we want to see in our communities.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, yeah, let me, let’s put everybody’s camera on and then I’m going to throw one of those, you know, incendiary kinds of what about ideas, but everybody join us and we’ll we’ll go into the Hollywood square section where everybody is here. Here’s a question I have. What, and I don’t know, Rylan, you may think this is just the stupidest idea on the planet, but what would happen if we decided we were going to eliminate property taxes for retail and commercial businesses with a street facing front. This is not an easy thing to do, would involve provinces, the P word and municipalities, and how would municipalities be made whole, et cetera. But everybody open your mics so that we don’t ever have to say you’re muted. And let’s talk about that. Do we have some bold decisions we could take to really… Yeah, go ahead, Olivier, bold, be bold, Olivier.

Olivier Legault It’s maybe not as bold as you would like, but it’s just something that happens in Quebec right now, so it’s kind of, it’s brand new, right? So municipalities don’t use that power very much, but they have to, they can have a different taxing rate, according to different zones in their municipalities. So, let’s say you want to have a fair share of what it costs. Well, if you look at Walmart, and it’s been shown a lot of times, that Walmart is basically a building that isn’t worth anything for the kind of area it takes, and what you have to build as infrastructure in order to make this happen, and the services you’ve got to provide in order make it work, well, at the end of the life cycle of the building, the municipality will have to lose money. But in downtown area, this is where you gain money about the infrastructure you build and the service to take. So basically you can have a different rate. So, the Walmart pays its fair share of taxes. So this is the regulation you’ve got to fix, right?

Mary W. Rowe You know, just, we’re in the business of moving hearts and minds, you know, that economic development for decades has been focused on large branch plants moving into and attracting investments so that I can see my colleagues nodding. Let’s get that plant. We have folks in Southern Ontario who are on this chat who woke up to the news from Stellantis this morning, which affects Windsor and it’s a precarious place that we found ourselves in when we develop that form of economic development. So now, can we use this moment to refocus our efforts on local investment? I don’t know, Nicholas, what do you think? You’re in Northern Ontario. You’ve had a resource-based economy for decades. Can we switch it?

Nicholas Luck Can we switch it. Well, I guess at scale, can we switch it? Only incrementally, I don’t think it’s something we could do, just like a switch over a night. Obviously incrementally, and that’s the only way, even though, you know, sort of harkening back, saying there’s a new crisis every day, it doesn’t seem like the world wants to do that, you now. It’s everybody, well, I have a grand vision and we should just switch everything right away. So, I don’t know.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, I mean, I’m not a fan of grand visions. I get that. I think it’s incremental, too. I mean urban life is incremental. We just make little tweaks and changes. But as we look forward to the moment we’re in, Nancy, you’ve got a situation there where you’ve gotten tons of assets, and you’ve leveraged them in all sorts of ways to build the economy that is present in St. John now. And the question is, how will it continue to morph? Are there particular approaches that you think we should be taking. I want to stick on, if we can, what municipal governments should be trying to do. We have a number of them on the call. Thoughts Nancy? What’s St. John doing? Are they doing anything?

Nancy Tissington You know what, Mary, what I always find interesting is, you know, the goose that lays the golden egg, your centre. So, you know for me, an exercise in how much is coming, what’s our return on investment? You know, we have a lot of small business, if we were those small business. I think somebody did this during the pandemic paper, those windows shut down, what would that do to our local economy? And not just our, you know, our social economy, our experience of where we want to live and where we choose, you know, just the GDP, right? I’m actually going to go through that, because I get this pushback all the time when they see working over here on this and a private enterprise to get a whole bunch of cars and stuff moving over here. And I’m like, but hang on, we’re over here creating, creating all your taxes for you. What’s coming back to us? And I’m not seeing anything in our, I shouldn’t say anything. I mean, sewer and water, that’s not the sexy stuff, right? But it has to be done, you know, the business say we’re getting closed again, I’m like, yeah, but do you want water? Of course we do, but what other things are we doing to create the betterment of our main streets and supporting those small businesses? And I’ve been pounding, beating that drum, I guess, if you will, for a little bit. And I’m going to do this exercise. And thanks for the person that put that link up on taxation there from Vancouver. To your point, a few years ago, Downtown Halifax, I was living down there, was working at Spring Garden Road. They have done that incremental tax piece across a good group of people with BIAs and local municipal government. Just maybe take a look at that. Maybe I can find it and send the link later on Mary, but it’s a good exercise. It’s been working for them.

Mary W. Rowe We, you know, we’ve been toying at CUI about whether we should develop a Main Street index, whether it be, you’ve got these large things that people put up, oh, this is the health of the economy. Here’s where, you, know, this a sign that the economy is this. This is a sign the economy’s that. And they tend to be these large gross numbers. And the productivity discussion gets rolled up into it, and there’s a lot of hand-wringing. We’re trying to figure out, how do you signal where the strength in the economy is and how to invest in it. I’m interested, Olivier. Have you, in your experience, been able to convince people that there’s a connection between a robust main street, main street businesses, and innovation? Have you been able show that there is a connection?

Olivier Legault I think the connection is between governance and innovation, so how you manage your main street and how your structure is open to new ideas and how you can mobilize people in order to go with it.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, I mean, I’m fishing from you guys because I’ve got to give this talk this afternoon. But one of the things that I think is critical is to remind post-secondary institutions that they could have a very strong presence on main streets and in touch with the main street economy. And that part of the way they do that, and we can see it, we’ve got empty office floors, why not have post-Secondary institutions come into those spaces and somehow close the loop better between research, innovation, and on the ground, you know, entrepreneurship. Rylan, any thoughts on that from you? Oh, go ahead.

Rylan Graham Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I couldn’t agree more. And we have a beautiful campus here at UNBC in Prince George, but it is tucked away on a hill overlooking the city. And, you know, when the university, the decision was made to locate it, you know, about 40 years ago. The decision wasn’t to put it downtown or in the community. And I do think that has had these impacts of not being able to make those connections, whether it’s social connections, research connections, economic connections, better with the downtown main streets or the broader community as a whole. So to me, I always, there’s many universities in Canada that are tucked away at the edge, tucked on a hill. And I do see that as having been a missed opportunity, but we can’t go backwards. And I think the only solution is, as you mentioned, about how do we start to establish, you know, some presence, some satellite campus in our downtowns along our main streets. And I that there is a growing number of institutions who do see the benefit, who are doing that. And we do, at UNBC, have a presence in the downtown. But I think a good example more recently is the University of Calgary, who have moved parts of their school of architecture, planning, and landscape into the…

Mary W. Rowe Right, into the downtown building.

Rylan Graham Yeah, exactly. Into the former central library. And I just think, yeah, what an opportunity for those students to learn in this environment, that they’re then talking about in their studies, but also, yeah, the connections that are made by having this institution there, you know, students, faculty can go to the coffee shop, can go hang out in the park, whatever it might be. And so, yeah I do think that there needs to be absolutely more of that strengthening in the presence of post-secondary institutions in downtown because I see a multitude of benefits that can come from that.

Mary W. Rowe I mean, yesterday I was speaking at TMU in Toronto about settlement and immigration and all the big, big conversation that’s now taking place about what our immigration levels are going to look like. And in fact, we know that communities of every size across this country are looking for newcomers, looking for ways to incorporate newcomers and channel entrepreneurial energy and have more and more folks living in their communities. Whether you’re big or small, everybody wants people. So it’s interesting again to think about, well, what can go on to main streets? What can go into downtowns? And I just want to comment a couple of things. There’s no report folks. We’ve not done a report. It’s just the website. Not just, it’s a big honking thing, a platform, mainstreetcanada.ca. Maybe we should write a report, but we haven’t. And so it’s, it’s just a domain. Have a look. But, we are, I think, trying to figure how we capitalize on “What do you want to see on these main streets?”. And they’re everywhere, they’re at every scale. They’re in small communities and they’re in big communities. So are there other hints that we could be, what else could go into these places? We have the assets, we have the buildings, we have to storefronts.

Rylan Graham I mean, we could all learn a lot from Calgary, which has, you know, been very innovative in terms of how they’ve responded to the crash of oil and gas, which left a lot of vacant office buildings. And they’ve been working hard to develop programs.

Mary W. Rowe It takes time, it takes time. it takes time.

Rylan Graham Yeah, for sure. But they’ve supported these initiatives with these fiscal incentives, right? And I think back to my previous comment about needing to think about implementation and how we’re supporting that. And I see that in Calgary with their, yeah, ambition to convert some of these vacant spaces into housing. We need the municipality to start to develop these innovative programs. You know, the other thing that I’ll just mention is speaking about innovation, in Edmonton, you know, they’ve now started to tax vacant parcels, surface parking lots at a higher tax rate trying to incentivize landowners to instead develop those spaces which then obviously will have spin-off for the surrounding community. You know, I think maybe even to pull that thread further is, can you then use that money, that higher taxation and inject that back into the local community through streetscaping or whatever it might be. But again, I think that these are the types of programs we need to be thinking about to stimulate the sorts of things we want to see.

Mary W. Rowe Nicholas and Nancy, the two N’s. Thoughts from you two.

Nicholas Luck  Yeah, sort of to, I guess, piggyback on that, and looking at these spaces and on main streets for different usages, again, I mean, right now I’m actually doing some research with our local museum to look at some of these heritage buildings and see the usages over time and how they’ve adapted to changes in social or economic, you know, because we’ve seen this, through time, just to get an understanding through a historical lens. But also, I guess in the present, some examples from our main street, we have an architect that does custom home designs and she’s going to start her firm in an old music shop. And then on the upper floor, she’ll have her office and then on main floor, she’s going to have like a hot desk. for women-owned businesses, because there’s a lot of small businesses just that work from home and they don’t have a place to actually do media.

Mary W. Rowe They want to get out of the house …

Nicholas Luck Yeah, exactly. So things like that. Obviously, shared spaces. There’s a pizza place that shares a space with a baker, but the baker is only in on Fridays. And then the pizza place does pop-ups once a month. And then you’ll see people lined up two blocks down to get these pies, but, you know, they’re doing these cost-sharing agreements, right, really, you know, micro-level. And then, yeah, and again, I know, I think there was a mention in the State of Canada Cities report back, I was in ’24, I believe it was in Markham, where the University or the College there, you now, they utilized the main street building for, I think it was for their business department. And I’ve been trying to advocate for our local university, because they’re outside of the downtown. But they’re, you know, maybe a few kilometers away. So maybe it’s like, well, now, if you’re developing your business program, maybe do an incubator space, something like that. So yeah, just looking at these spaces in new ways and then also looking to the past, working with, you now, the archives, whether it’s your museum or library, to have an understanding of how these spaces have changed over time and adapted, and that might help us understand how to navigate the next crisis.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, I mean, just evolution, right? Nothing, a city is a living thing. We hope it’s never standing still. Nancy, thoughts on this?

Nancy Tissington Well, I’m pretty happy to say we’ve got some cranes in the sky that we haven’t seen for a while. So the birds have landed. There’s a little bit of you know, construction. It’s been it’s been difficult, we’re not used to the urban… The growth of getting new business or new buildings right on our waterfront. You know, we’re really excited about that growth. We’re really exciting about having more densification to support the businesses, and Rylan to your point, we do have a UMB. We have worked diligently in getting a little satellite down here, having more of that happening. Actually, we connect the BIA with those students to some of the businesses, it could be marketing, we had an architecture firm that we had students come through and we helped open those doors. So, those conversations, keeping those alive and well with our own, with the actual assets that we have within, how are we building on capacity? And I think we’re doing a pretty good job here. And I’m happy to say the developers, there’s more than one, so there’s not a one man show. We’ve got a couple. You know, some are a little more trying than the others, but hey, they’re here, they’ve investing in our city centre, and you know, that’s bringing, Mary to your point, that’s bringing us hope.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, it’s going to take all of these things. I think that’s the question that we have to be continually reminding ourselves is that, as I say, cities aren’t static communities, even small communities, I think the ones that are static. One of the things that came up in the immigration session I was in is people were sort of saying, well, why can’t, why don’t immigrants move to so and so, and we all agreed that people move to where there’s life. And so, the question is, how do you invest in creating life for an urban environment? Olivier, when you and your, I know you haven’t been there the whole 40 years, but in the years of experience that Rue Principale has been laying down this track, any last words from you in terms of how you bring life to the main street?

Olivier Legault Well, it’s all about residents and different places, about people, and you know, you’ve got to succeed in the complexity there and having a university downtown, and having your cultural, you know, complex downtown, and your Centre des Fois, you know, the Convention Center downtown. And you see so many midtowns, you know, that have all those things, but it’s all, you know, everywhere but in downtown. This is all those projects that you got to succeed. So it’s all about the reflex of, it should go right in the centre. And we’ll find a way, and we’ll densify, and we’ll buy land, and we can trade it off, and play a monopoly game. And this is what we’ve got to get into.

Mary W. Rowe I love the idea, Nancy, did you hear that? Olivier sounded pretty hopeful to me. Reflex, about the reflex, that the reflex be about investing in downtown. Last words to Nicholas and Rylan, thoughts from you about what we need to be prioritizing to bring life to Main Street.

Rylan Graham Sure, maybe I’ll jump in first. I think absolutely housing, housing, housing. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a cure to a lot of the challenges in downtowns. I think the other thing and working in smaller and mid-sized cities, it’s an attitude shift that actually these places can have exciting urban environments and creative solutions. One of the best container villages, retail spaces I’ve been to is in St. John, such a fantastic space. So again, these communities can have these types of things too.

Nicholas Luck Yeah, I will also cannon that, more housing, densification, more people living downtown that also attracts investment, and place-making. More initiatives like that, and celebrating and having pride in the local culture. So fostering that and just encouraging people to shop main street and hang out downtown you know, and live downtown, especially young people.

Mary W. Rowe You know, when in doubt, add people. It’s interesting, here in Vancouver, when I was looking at the stats as I was preparing for this afternoon, they have the same, pretty much the same number of workers coming in every day to the downtown as live here. And that ratio was not the same in other downtowns across the country. That’s an interesting little, I’m trying to find out is that the magic ratio? I don’t know what it is, but the idea of what you were all just suggesting is we just need more people. So we always say at CUI, you know, people and place together are what delivers potential. And I’m going to add now, Nancy, it delivers hope. So listen, thanks for joining us on Liberation Day plus one. We’re going to continue to develop Main Street Canada. We hope we get lots of suggestions, lots of ways to improve this site. Of course, we’d like to have lots of funding so we can buy more data. Just saying, so please engage with us on this. We have CityTalks coming up all along these themes around how you intensify, create resilience, and how do you invest, for instance, in the future of places that faith communities have built. What are the actual environmental challenges that we’re facing at the Main Street granular level. So lots coming ahead, how we can boost our economic nutrition, our friends at Shorefast are going to do something on that. So, really great to have you all on CityTalk. Nancy, Nicholas, Olivier, Rylan, thank you for joining us. Great to have you.

Mary W. Rowe Good luck with those cruise ships, Nancy. Thanks, everybody.