Small Business Month: support those who support you

This is an opinion column. The views are the author’s own.

I was eager to visit my friend’s local pub in Thunder Bay, Sleeping Giant Brewery, arriving in the evening to find the establishment we had enjoyed closed down, empty and vacated. A true downer. The economy is unravelling before us, tariffed to pieces and regulated as well. The costs you see at the grocer are passed on to restaurants, pubs and grills, small bakeries and even fast-food outlets that are not making enough dough to pay their rent, let alone hire the staff they badly need. Jewelry stores that once belonged to our precious local mom-and-pop operations are being swallowed by corporate chains as uncontrollable expenses drive local businesses into the dirt and into insolvency. Since the pandemic, small and medium-sized businesses have only survived their monthly toil of paying for payroll, rent and expenses, hoping to save something for the future. Many go into debt, a debt they will never get out from under.

Breweries and wineries face ever-increasing costs for their cans and bottles. The grains and grapes they need are costly now too. A craft brew can cost anywhere from $3.50 to $12.50 or more, making a 24-case very expensive. Even the old traditional Canadian and Labatt Blue make your pocketbook itch in distress. Cobblers, specialty stores, eateries, salons and nail studios are all slowly moving beyond what our pocketbooks can survive. We find ourselves budgeting everything, penny-pinching here and there, hoping not to waste our hard-earned dollars. Prices rise with the same excuses: costs, taxes, supply-chain woes and, generally, things happen. Prices climb beyond our expectations as greed-flation becomes legitimized.

Some have given up the economic and spiritual fight. Who’s winning? The government has us by the you-know-whats, managing every vice known to us, from booze to gambling, which is so extensive and socially influential, to the possibility of legalizing and managing the “ladies and gents of the night.” Corporations are picking our left pocket while our governments slip into our right. A crazy feeling erodes any sense of accomplishment as we ask ourselves: what’s next, Trump? What is mine, and what is yours, government? Uncertainty sets in, and the purpose becomes surviving the day without going insane.

The Conservatives, Liberals, Greens and NDP all have something to say as they pick on each other. Accomplishments nationally, and perhaps even locally, are harder to see. Will I be able to pay my rent, mortgage, lease payments or energy bills this month? Politicians spend too much time talking about their debt-creation programs called infrastructure projects, ignoring the little guy. Tax cuts or deferred payments only work if you have a good job, right? Or a financially workable pot to put something in.

The reason Sleeping Giant Brewery closed? The cost of cans escalated, and the customer base shrank, not because of the cost of beer but because overall expenses made a quiet drink with friends financially intolerable. C’est la vie.

October is Small Business Month. Support those who support you.

Steven Kaszab lives in Bradford, Ont.

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