Power, labour crunch affect business: Chamber of Commerce sessions in Sudbury seek to bring small business concerns to the table.

• Author: Myers, Ella
• Position: Small Business

Small businesses in Sudbury have been feeling ignored. This much was made clear during summer sessions run by the Sudbury Chamber of Commerce as part of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce's "Small Business Too Big To Ignore" campaign, launched in May and wrapped up in September.

The Sudbury Chamber held four sessions over the summer to give local businesses with 100 or fewer employees a platform to discuss obstacles they have faced in recent years, and potential solutions.

"I think it's about having their voices heard, and having the development of a more pro-business co-system," said Andre Dumais, a session chair and the business development manager at Black Rock Engineering.

Employing nearly three million Ontarians, and often supporting big business, the Ontario Chamber argues that small businesses need more support from the province.

The sessions focused on the top three obstacles to small business success that were highlighted in an associated Ontario Chamber report: a lack of access to the workers they need, key infrastructure gaps, and the rising cost of doing business.

"We're a small business in the context in that we do a lot of business startups. We're like Dragons' Den in real life," said participant Gilles Lebeau, vice-president of Milman Industries.

There are other bureaucratic and operation barriers as well, said Lebeau.

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According to the Ontario Chamber report, electricity costs have increased from 4.7 cents to 18 cents per kilowatt hour since 2004, a 383 per cent increase. Lebeau said that energy costs are his biggest concern, and one that came up often in the session he attended.

"Even if you're a hairdresser, they're really, concerned about the energy costs," said Lebeau. "We have a lot of projects that people come to us to look at, and I've refused to look at them because they have an energy requirement. We won't even look at it anymore, and that's bad. There are a lot of potential jobs that just don't get created."

Lebeau said electricity isn't the only potentially prohibitive cost associated with doing business. He pointed to other costs like a rising minimum wage, WSIB fees and property taxes. Accessing or navigating these systems was also a burden, he said.

"One of my fundamental rules of business is overheads kill small businesses. That hydro bill each month is an overhead. They're already being choked by a bunch of other things because you can't control that," said Lebeau.

Lebeau said other...