Recently North Bay came under pressure, for a second year in a row, being named one of the worst places to do business in Canada, however Innovation Initiatives Ontario North (IION), along with the city’s business community refuted that information together, this morning, instead praising the growth North Bay has seen lately.
Matt Doherty, Economic Development & Operations Manager at IION felt the CFIB report was unfair and unrepresentative of the current and actual economic climate of North Bay.
“The report done by the CFIB is done with statistics that don’t really represent the local perspective of the people and small to medium sized businesses.” Doherty said. “We’re trying to change that today. This isn’t the first year we’ve done our own report, but this is the first year we’re actively communicating it.”
He outlined how IION has helped in the creation of 128 full time jobs over the last year, as well as other support they’ve provided for local businesses and how IION needed to get the success of local businesses across to other places in the Province and in Canada.
“We feel we need to do this because of the great results these businesses are getting,” Doherty said. “We need to make it more commonly known.”
Among the businesses present were New Ontario Brewing, MetricAid, and Knight Manufacturing, who all attested to the positive business environment North Bay has provided them since their inception.
Ron Clancy, owner of New Ontario Brewing, said one of his favourite stories to tell was when city workers came late Thanksgiving Friday night to fix a water main, getting the business back up and running by early afternoon the next day.
“That just doesn’t happen in other cities,” he said. “I hear stories of municipalities of giving trouble with zoning and red tape, but not here.”
Clancy said even the business community has been welcoming, bringing up the New Business of the Year Award his company received recently.
Mayor Al McDonald said although he didn’t agree with the CFIB report, he still believed North Bay had a lot of work to do to become an even better business community.
“It’s a small report,” he said. “If I had heard from the chamber or from IION that there were challenges, then I’d be really concerned, but we heard from local entrepreneurs that it’s a wonderful place to do business.”
McDonald believed one of the strengths North Bay had stood in the economic diversity it had, with a wide variety of strong local businesses spanning many different sectors, like the three businesses represented in the announcement Thursday morning.
“If you aren’t number one, then you aren’t trying hard enough,” he said. “So yes, we have a lot of work to do, and we need to communicate better to outside cities. We need our local entrepreneurs and business leaders to step up and say how wonderful North Bay is for business.
