Connect with us

Business

Beautiful downtown restaurant and gift shop turning to community to survive Covid-19

Published

11 minute read

This GoFundMe request is indicative of the atmosphere so many small businesses have been forced to try to endure for the last two long years.  

Here’s an opportunity for people who love these particular businesses to have the opportunity to save them.

From GoFundMe

Tribe & Sunworks Need your Help

It’s time for us to ask even though this is extremely uncomfortable. We have exhausted all of our other options. Sunworks and Tribe need your help to keep open until life returns to some sort of normal. We’ve set up this GoFundMe page with the hope that you’ll come to our rescue. Please consider giving to help us through what we all hope is the end of the pandemic.
What follows is our story of our struggle to survive, while so many of our fellow retailers and restaurateurs haven’t. This industry has been especially hard hit, and in many ways overlooked in policy and funding decisions. We know you have watched us, supported us when you could, and had us in your thoughts as the community wrestled to keep everyone safe and healthy.

Here’s our story.

In 2019 Tribe and Sunworks were both in the process of restructuring and expanding, when everything went sideways at the start of 2020.
Sunworks
Sunworks sold most of its inventory and moved in March of 2019 to its new location on Little Gaetz. What remained, our customers and friends carried by hand in a long fire line from our old location to the new one. 2019 our revenues were sparse as we worked to rebuild our inventory and adapt to our new space. This is important to note because it is the 2019 figures that all the COVID-19 grants were based upon. By the end of the year Sunworks was up and running in our new place but still working to rebuild the business. Things were steadily improving in spite of the economy, which you will recall was pretty flat.
COVID struck in the beginning of 2020 and we did our best to adapt. We used our closed time to build an online shop and to install a takeout food counter so that when we were able to reopen we would have improved services and hopefully multiple streams of revenue. With only one employee we worked to keep the store alive through online sales. She did a fantastic job and you supported us through the first couple of months of shutdown.
We used the government loan funds to help us with these projects and those at Tribe. Funds went to the staff to keep some of them employed and also for the building costs to improve the space.
Most recently, the Omicron wave has by far been the most difficult for us, striking our business in what should have been the busiest season of the year. Sales were down about 60K for the shopping season, which is typically the time we make it or break it.
Tribe
As you know restaurants and bars suffered a lot more than retail and other industries. We had longer periods of closure and restrictions. We were unable to keep many of the staff employed but did what we could to help them. We hired, trained, and reopened no matter how limited after each shutdown. It became a cycle of layoffs, retraining, and adapting. Quite exhausting for everyone.
In 2019 Tribe was expanding and taking on new liabilities as we doubled the size of the space with the long term vision to build what is now Tribe River Bar. During the shutdowns and restrictions we used the time to make renovations and improvements as best we could. We tried to adapt for ‘online, curbside, and delivery’, but quickly discovered that our customers, although they loved our food, were coming for the ambiance and romance of the room itself. We had limited success with the strategy even though we tried multiple apps.
The Omicron wave hit Tribe with equal force. Christmas parties and celebrations were postponed, and the new year was very minimal. We did what we could with the workforce we had. There were days that we had more cancellations than bookings. Revenue was a quarter of what it should have been. It made the preparation and planning nearly impossible.  There has been a lot of food wasted during the restriction. All of this created chaos and hardship for the staff.  Our most loyal staff are hanging on with faith and hope.
—-
As we progressed with the pandemic we didn’t qualify for many of the grants, because most were based on 2019 revenue numbers and our businesses were expanding, taking on new lease/mortgage commitment or debt to grow prior to the pandemic. Although business was down in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019, it wasn’t enough to reach the threshold for grant approval. Expenses were not considered. Growing businesses across the country fell through the cracks with the funding program with the exception of new debt. We are liquidating what we can to minimize the growing debt. The workload this created for business owners like us was unsustainable. Almost daily we were forced to choose among the most urgent tasks to leave for the next day.
Our local bank has been exceptional in helping us through some of the worst times by postponing payments. This added to the future debt owing but at least it allowed us to operate.
Which brings us to today. We have exhausted all of the options we had to keep our heads above water. We’ve delayed payments to CRA (which is never a good thing), refinanced everything we can, limited labour hours and cut costs wherever we could and held off mortgage payments. Omicron has created such uncertainty among the public who are growing weary of the pandemic, who don’t want to get sick nor spread the virus any further. The weather has been too cold to encourage restaurant bookings. Add this to a very weak Christmas and New Year season, which normally supports us through until the warm weather in April, and we’ve reached the end of our rope.
Here is what we are proposing.
During the course of the pandemic, we have had numerous customers call or comment to ask how they can help, offering money to support the utilities or other expenses. We have up until this point have appreciated the calls of support but have struggled onward. We expected the situation to improve more quickly and we certainly worked hard to set ourselves up to succeed once life returns to some sense of normal.
Our commitment to you is that if you fund us now, once we are back on our feet and revenue has recovered, we will make contributions to the Red Deer and District Community Foundation to assist in other community needs in the future. We have no idea whether our asking for help will be met with respect or with the good intent we mean. We are grateful for everyone that has supported us over the years and particularly through this pandemic crisis. If you can help now it will mean a lot to us.
9,565 raised of $25,000 goal
58 donations

Updates (2)

Todayby Terry Warke, Organizer
Thank you you everyone for your support. We are 36% of the way. We appreciate everyone’s efforts. Please feel free to share this campaign with those whom you think would want to know and help. We are hoping that by the end of next week we’ll reach the goal and can begin to address some of the issues that have accumulated over the past two years. Also, thank you to many of you who have come to shop for Valentine’s day or who have made reservations at Tribe. We are feeling the strength and support of our community and this gives us hope. As always please give us a call or stop in if you would like to. chat. Paul and Terry.
Organizer
Paul Harris
Organizer
Red Deer, AB

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

Follow Author

Business

Canada holds valuable bargaining chip in trade negotiations with Trump

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Alex Whalen and Jake Fuss

On the eve of a possible trade war with the United States, Canadian policymakers have a valuable bargaining chip they can play in any negotiations—namely, Canada’s “supply management” system.

During his first day in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said he may impose “25 per cent” tariffs on Canadian and Mexican exports into the United States on Feb. 1. In light of his resounding election win and Republican control of both houses of congress, Trump has a strong hand.

In response, Canadian policymakers—including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford—have threatened retaliation. But any retaliation (tariffs imposed on the U.S., for example) would likely increase the cost of living for Canadians.

Thankfully, there’s another way. To improve our trade position with the U.S.—and simultaneously benefit Canadian consumers—policymakers could dismantle our outdated system of supply management, which restricts supply, controls imports and allows producers of milk, eggs and poultry to maintain higher prices for their products than would otherwise exist in a competitive market. Government dictates who can produce, what can be produced, when and how much. While some aspects of the system are provincial (such as certain marketing boards), the federal government controls many key components of supply management including import restrictions and national quotas.

How would this help Canada minimize the Trump threat?

In the U.S., farmers backed Trump by a three-to-one margin in the 2024 election, and given Trump’s overall views on trade, the new administration will likely target Canadian supply management in the near future. (Ironically, Trump has cried foul about Canadian tariffs, which underpin our supply management system.) Given the transactional nature of Trump’s leadership, Canadian negotiators could put supply management on the negotiating table as a bargaining chip to counter demands that would actually damage the Canadian economy, such as Trump’s tariffs. This would allow Trump to deliver increased access to the Canadian market for the farmers that overwhelmingly supported him in the election.

And crucially, this would also be good for Canadian consumers. According to a 2015 study, our supply management system costs the average Canadian household an estimated extra $300 to $444 annually, and higher prices hurt lower-income Canadians more than any other group. If we scrapped supply management, we’d see falling prices at the grocery store and increased choice due to dairy imports from the U.S.

Unfortunately, Parliament has been moving in the opposite direction. Bill C-282, which recently passed in the House of Commons and is now before the Senate, would entrench supply management by restricting the ability of Canadian trade negotiators to use increased market access as a tool in international trade negotiations. In other words, the bill—if passed—will rob Canadian negotiators of a key bargaining chip in negotiations with Trump. With a potential federal election looming, any party looking to strengthen Canada’s trade position and benefit consumers here at home should reject Bill C-282.

Trade negotiations in the second Trump era will be difficult so our policymakers in Ottawa and the provinces must avoid self-inflicted wounds. By dismantling Canada’s system of supply management, they could win concessions from Team Trump, possibly avert a destructive tit-for-tat tariff exchange, and reduce the cost of living for Canadians.

Alex Whalen

Director, Atlantic Canada Prosperity, Fraser Institute

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute
Continue Reading

Business

StatsCan Confirms Canada’s Middle Class Is Disappearing Under Liberal Mismanagement

Published on

The Opposition with Dan Knight

A new Statistics Canada report reveals widening income inequality and a shrinking middle class, all while Trudeau’s Liberals push policies that benefit the wealthy and punish working Canadians.

A newly released report from Statistics Canada on household economic accounts for the third quarter of 2024 confirms what many Canadians have long suspected—while the wealthiest continue to rake in profits, middle- and lower-income families are left struggling under the weight of economic policies that seem designed to work against them. The report, released today, paints a stark picture of a country where financial inequality is not just persisting, but growing.

The numbers don’t lie. Income inequality has increased, with the top 40% of earners pulling even further ahead of the bottom 40%. The gap in disposable income between these two groups expanded to 46.9 percentage points, up from 46.3 just a year ago. The highest-income households saw their disposable income rise by 6.8%, largely driven by soaring investment gains, while the poorest Canadians saw only a 3.7% increase, barely enough to keep up with the cost of living. Meanwhile, middle-income earners experienced sluggish wage growth of just 2.7%, well below the national average.

Despite declining interest rates, lower-income households found themselves paying more on mortgages and consumer credit, while the wealthy reaped the benefits of higher investment yields. The data shows that middle-income households, who are already feeling the squeeze from inflation and stagnating wages, saw their share of national income shrink.

The most revealing statistic is in net worth distribution. The top 20% of wealthiest Canadians control nearly two-thirds (64.7%) of the country’s net worth, averaging an eye-watering $3.3 million per household. Meanwhile, the bottom 40% hold just 3.3%, barely scraping by with an average of $83,189 in assets.

However, the real estate market has provided a rare silver lining for some lower-wealth households, as they were able to take advantage of slightly more favorable conditions to buy homes, increasing their net worth at the fastest pace. But even that gain is tempered by the reality that housing costs remain unaffordable for many, and young Canadians under 35 continue to pull back from homeownership altogether.

Let’s be clear—this isn’t happening by accident. This is what happens when you let a government of self-serving narcissists run the country into the ground. Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party have spent nearly a decade dismantling the Canadian economy, pushing a radical, ideologically driven agenda that benefits their elite donor class while leaving working Canadians behind. And now, as the country crumbles under the weight of their incompetence, Trudeau is running for the exits, leaving the mess to whoever’s foolish enough to take the job.

And what do they do on the way out? Do they work to secure our economy? To make life more affordable? To protect Canadian workers? No. Instead, they decide to pick a fight with the United States. Donald Trump, who actually puts his country first—imagine that—announces a 25% tariff on Canadian imports, a move meant to address drug trafficking and illegal immigration, and what’s the Liberals’ response? Do they try to work out a deal? Do they negotiate in good faith to protect Canadian jobs? No. Instead, Chrystia Freeland comes out swinging, proposing retaliatory tariffs that will hurt Canadian businesses just as much, if not more, than they’ll hurt the U.S.

This isn’t about protecting Canada. This isn’t about securing the border or fighting for our economy. This is about pure, partisan politics. The Liberal base wants conflict with the U.S. Not because it’s good for the country, but because their fragile, self-righteous worldview depends on it. They hate Trump, and they hate that his America-First policies are actually working for American workers. So instead of finding a solution, they escalate. They antagonize. Because their base loves it. Not because Canada benefits, but because Liberals benefit.

Subscribe to The Opposition with Dan Knight .

For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.

And meanwhile, what’s Jagmeet Singh doing? The man who loves to talk about standing up for the working class? He could pull the plug on this corrupt government today with a non-confidence motion. But he won’t. Because, like every other member of the political elite in this country, he’s more interested in protecting his own position than actually doing his job. He makes noise about fighting for Canadian workers, but when the moment comes to act, he folds—again.

So here we are. The economy is in shambles. The wealth gap is growing. The middle class is getting squeezed to death. And the people in charge are too busy playing partisan games to do anything about it. Trudeau is leaving, but his legacy of economic destruction, division, and incompetence will live on through the same out-of-touch Liberal elites who put us in this mess.

But here’s the thing—Canada is better than this. We are a nation built on hard work, freedom, and opportunity, not on government control, reckless spending, and endless excuses. We are a country that thrives when its people—not bureaucrats in Ottawa—decide their own future.

It’s time for Canadians to take their country back. It’s time to put an end to this cycle of economic ruin and government failure. We don’t need more empty promises, more excuses, or more Liberal arrogance. We need an election. We need leaders who believe in the strength of Canadians, not the power of government.

Enough is enough. If we want a future where hard work is rewarded, where families can afford to buy a home, and where our economy is built to benefit all Canadians—not just the elite—then we must act. This country belongs to you, not the Liberal Party, not the special interests, and certainly not the self-serving political class in Ottawa.

Canada deserves better. And the time to demand it is now.

Subscribe to The Opposition with Dan Knight .

For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.

Continue Reading

Trending

X