Business Spotlight – Calgary Restaurant And Brewery Prepare For Stage One

The Alberta relaunch strategy; a breath of fresh air for us Calgarians. We have done our part as members of the community and now as we begin to take those two steps forward from one step back, we cheer with concern as details of the relaunch strategy begin to take effect as early as May 14th. The launch of ‘Stage 1’ of the strategy is to have multiple businesses begin to re-emerge from their COVID-19 hibernation with lifted restrictions on cafes, restaurants and bars. They can reopen for public seating at 50% capacity, but people will not be able to go to the bar to order drinks, they will need to be served at the table.

Businesses that continue to operate through this crisis are seeing the dust begin to settle. One local Calgary company Paddy’s Barbecue and Brewery traditionally would see customers served their locally brewed beer at the bar and enjoying their rotisserie barbecue cuisine in house. Safe to say since the state of local emergency was declared on March 15th, every restaurant and bar in the city was left with a choice, close shop to weather the storm, or adapt to the situation early and move their offerings online.

Kerry & Jordan are the owners of Paddy’s Barbecue and Brewery, the concept was the brainchild of their son Paddy. Kerry from Ontario and Jordan spending his youth in Calgary, met in London Ontario, and moved back to Calgary in the 1980s. Their specialty with Paddy’s is a wide menu of smoked meats, sandwiches and their own in-house brewed beer. With the experience behind their brewmaster, Dan Lake, their beers won multiple awards in the 2020 Alberta Beer Awards.

Let’s take it back to March 15th. Jordan and Kerry, immediately shut their doors to the public to focus solely on the well being of their team and their customers. Quick to react, by March 17th they had moved their menu online for pickup so they could continue to serve their customers. Seeing so much support from the community for local businesses, they welcome anyone who would like to visit their location to pick up their order and explore their range of bottled and canned beer. Thankful for support from the community, Jordan mentions:

“…Calgarians are rallying behind local merchants that are still open. They are visiting us and buying gift cards. They’re coming in with smiles on their faces. I will say that Calgarians are just wonderful…”

Most of us by now have made ourselves aware of the Alberta Relaunch Strategy. Currently, we remain with the strongest guidelines in place with some relief for recreation like golf courses and skateparks across Alberta. Focusing on stage 1, Paddy’s are not alone in balancing precaution with normality moving towards May 14th. Some of the larger concerns in the community are related to a possible second wave of COVID-19, how to offer the highest level of precaution for this industry to allow in-house seating and how will we as individuals feel safe returning to our favorite restaurants.

If we remind ourselves of the regulations that any restaurant has to adhere to generally operate and to handle the food we eat. They are uniquely poised and trained to adhere to health and safety regulations put forward by the Alberta Health Services. Paddy’s have been actively sanitizing all areas of their restaurant to reduce any risk of contamination and will continue to follow recommendations from regulatory bodies. In regards to reopening, they are taking a cautious approach. Some of the guidelines for Stage 1 consist of restaurants to operate with a 50% reduction for in house seating and to continue with a two-meter distance from individual customers. Paddy’s would traditionally have a 70 person capacity and will work to operate with this reduction with the addition of new outdoor seating. Moving forward, Jordan and Kerry are eager to listen to their customers for what they want in terms of precaution in the wake of reopening.

This is a time where we are reminded of what are the more important things in life. It has also allowed us to miss a lot of smaller things. We are looking forward to the other end of this pandemic as a community hurting. Jordan is particularly looking forward to socializing again at some of his favorite bars and restaurants.

He believes that the cancellations of events like sports games and festivals can have a silver lining. His optimism is based on the energy and positivity of the people in our community:

“…we are going to spend more time with family, we’re going to have more time to be creative, more time to make Calgary a vibrant city”

We wish Paddy’s Barbecue and Brewery the best of success with re-opening moving towards May 14th. If you would like to learn more about Jordan and Kerry or to support them by ordering from their takeaway menu, visit their social media below or website here.

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Related Topics:Bar Barbecue Brewery food Relaunch Shoplocal

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.