Canniff, Duben, chat with chamber members
Dealing with the rapidly changing economic climate created by the Big Orange Guy south of the border and his on-again, off-again tariffs has been fatiguing for local businesses.
With that in mind, the Chatham-Kent Chamber of Commerce hosted a fireside chat with the municipality’s top politician and top administrator on April 10.
Mayor Darrin Canniff and CAO Michael Duben discussed everything from supporting local and Canadian businesses to the municipality’s role during the uncertainty, to housing concerns.
Canniff said the economic conditions today created by the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump has some similarities with the Covid pandemic that struck just a few years ago.
“This is not a whole lot different than the crisis we went through several years ago. Businesses struggled with the pandemic. That was something we never expected back then,” he said. “This becomes a very similar model in terms of what the municipality can do. We don’t have the budget (or the legal means) to say all the businesses impacted don’t have to pay property taxes.”
Duben said the business community is more flexible than government. Businesses adapt.
“I have found businesses to be very flexible. We saw during Covid that people who were making widgets all of a sudden were able to pivot. Within three weeks, they were making masks or whatever other protective equipment was needed,” he said.
They support and encourage the idea of buying local in the face of tariffs, and at any time, really.
“We talked a lot about how do we make sure we’re buying Canadian,” Canniff said, referring to a recent council meeting. “It’s so important to move forward that we are supporting that movement.”
That included tasking administration to find ways to purchase what the municipality needs – whenever possible – in Canada.
“Whether there were tariffs or not, there is a lot of benefit to buying local,” Duben said. “It’s going to create more economic activity in Canada. It’s going to result in us realizing we can do more. It’s going to allow us to compete in areas that it was hard for us to compete before.”
He admits, however, not everything will be rosy and some labour and business sectors will suffer.
“This will eventually work itself out, one way or another. There will be a new normal. We just don’t know what it is yet,” he said.
Canniff agrees there will be opportunities due to the tariffs.
“There’s a lot of negativity to it, but it provides a lot of opportunities for us. We were pretty reliant on the U.S. This is a wake-up call for us as a country to say it is time to diversify,” he said.
A key downside to the economic turbulence is in economic development, or lack of it, in Chatham-Kent. Canniff said investment in the municipality is largely on hold.
“We have a lot of investment files; a lot of people say they want to invest in Chatham-Kent as a business,” he said. “Well, there’s a lot of frost on those files right now. People look and say, ‘I wanted to build a plant here in Chatham-Kent, but with all this going on, I’m not talking about that right now.’”
Should the tariff situation spark a recession, Canniff said while businesses might pull back spending during such times, the municipality is prepared to go in a different direction.
“We as a municipality can continue spending. We know we have to invest in roads and bridges. We need to invest in our community,” he said.
Doing so during a recession makes sense, Canniff added.
“We have the ability to borrow. We’re in a great financial position. We need to go stimulate the economy,” he said. “This would be cheaper for us to invest during a recession as there is more available labour.”
