 The past is now starting. All attendees are in listen-only mode. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for today's webinar on economic development opportunities with local government legislation. We picked this topic because we had a lot of feedback that this was a gap in people's knowledge and they want to learn more about those opportunities that we're hiding in their local government legislation. And because we thought it would be a great topic for Small Business Week in British Columbia right now and you'll be hearing a lot about benefits that you can utilize for your small businesses. Before we begin, I'll introduce myself. My name is Jessica Ritchie. I'm with the Regional Programs and Engagement Branch in the Ministry of Jobs, Trade and Technology. I'll be moderating the Q&A period and if you're experiencing any technical challenges you can reach out to me and I'll try and help you resolve them. I'm located in Victoria, British Columbia on the unceded Coast Salish territory of Lola-Quangan people, known today as the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nation. And today we are going to hear from three different groups. First, we're going to hear from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and they're going to be speaking specifically to local government legislation and some of the economic development opportunities in it. Second, we're going to hear from Gibson, the City of Nipsons. Sorry, second here. I can just make sure you're all muted, all of our panelists. Sorry about that. We have Gibson's on the economic development opportunities and successes that they've had through local government legislation and kind of show the tools that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing have talked about and how they've been in action and benefiting their community. And then we're going to hear from the Small Business Roundtable about the Open for Business Award nomination process because nominations are now open and this is a great way that you can celebrate your community. But before we get into the webinar, I'm going to go over some housekeeping and then I'll introduce our speakers. So if you haven't used the GoToWebinar platform, there's just a couple of things you should know. If you're experiencing audio issues, what I'd recommend is try using a phone. You can do that by just clicking the phone option. A phone number will pop up with a pin specific to you and you'll be able to join the webinar that way. The second thing you should know, we are going to be pausing after each presentation to allow you to ask our panelists some questions. Please pop questions into the question box anytime you think of them. You don't have to wait until the question and answer period and I'll be asking our panelists that. If you have any issues throughout the webinar, you can also throw those in there and I can try and help you as our presenters are speaking. If we don't get to a question that you've asked, we will try and follow up with you after the webinar via email. I would like to remind everyone as well that this session is being recorded. If you know of someone that you think would benefit from the information that's being shared that wasn't able to attend, we'll be posting both the webinar recording as well as the slides from today at gov.bc.ca slash economic development and you'll be able to look under the economic development section, or sorry, the BC ideas exchange on our economic development page. So that's all the housekeeping that I have for today. So with that, I'm going to pass it over to my colleagues, Catherine Lee and Brent Mueller at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. So bear with us. We're just going to do a technical switch here and they're going to be presenting the material. My name is Catherine Lee and I'm a senior program analyst with the governance relations unit in the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. And I'm here with my colleague Brent Mueller, who is the director of governance relations. Next slide. And today we will be giving you a brief overview of what our area does with the ministry main legislation that gives local governments their authority and guides their decision making. Some of the legislative tools that local governments can use for economic development and some on the ground examples of local governments who are using these tools. And then lastly, we will look at the local government's land use planning framework and how it can support economic development. And next slide, please. So looking at our ministry structure, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is made up of the local government division, the Office of Housing and Construction Standards and Community and Legislative Services. And within the local government division is the governance and structure branch, which is where our unit governance relations sits. And we're responsible for encouraging relationships and agreements between local and First Nations governments and supporting local governments' economic and social development through managing the ministry's sponsored Crown Grant program. We also support resort development and business improvement areas and help to ensure that local government interests are considered in environmental assessment processes. Okay, change the slide, please. And so before we look at the tools on the legislation that enables the tools, I think it's helpful to understand that BC's local government system is based on the concepts of autonomy, empowerment and accountability and collaboration among local governments and with other forms and levels of government. So in the context of tools that can support businesses and economic development, this means that most of the tools are voluntary. So local governments can choose to use them or not based on local and regional priorities. And the ministry does not provide a lot of oversight for how local governments use these tools and we do not question local government decision making. Next slide. So the main legislation that applies to local governments is the Community Charter and the Local Government Act. And the Community Charter gives municipalities broad powers to create services, enter into partnerships and create bodies such as corporations and commissions that can be used to support economic development and business promotion. And similarly, the Local Government Act gives regional districts broad powers to create services, enter into partnerships and create bodies. And it also provides the framework for local and regional planning and other land use management tools which Brent will touch on in just a little bit. Next slide, please. So as you can see, local governments have a number of tools they can choose to support economic development in their communities. And we'll just go over each of these in a little bit more detail and I will give some examples of how local governments are using these tools or how they can use them. Next slide, please. So the first tool is broad powers. Local governments have broad authority to provide any service that the council or board considers necessary or desirable. And they can do this through partnerships with another local government, a private corporation, a not-for-profit organization, and a first nation or a public authority such as a school board. Next slide, please. And they also have corporate powers and cost recovery powers. And these powers are similar for both municipalities and regional districts. Their corporate powers enable them to enter into agreements with other bodies, create corporations and societies, delegate their powers, duties and functions, for example, to a council or board member or committee or commission. And they can also own and dispose of land and other assets. And they can also impose fees and charges for service provision and use of government property. And under the community charter, municipalities have flexible authority to exercise regulatory powers in relation to a number of spheres such as businesses and public places. And regional districts have a little bit more limited regulatory powers and municipalities. So for example, unless specifically provided to them, regional districts generally do not have the authority to regulate businesses unless they are provided that authority through a provincial regulation. And next slide. And the community charter and local government act prohibit local governments from assisting business. However, the legislation does allow local governments to provide assistance to business for the provision of services as long as there is a partnering agreement in place. Next slide, please. So looking at some of the partnering agreements that local governments can enter into with businesses. And I apologize for the text heavy slides here. I'm not going to go over each point on the slides in each legislative reference, but I put that information in here in case people want to go back and look at the decorator or maybe look up something in the legislation. My plan is more just to introduce each tool and then give an example of how it can be used on the ground. So don't be too daunted by a couple of these slides. So looking at partnerships, municipalities and regional districts can enter into partnering agreements with businesses for the provision of a service on behalf of the municipality or regional district. So a common example of this is partnering with a business to deliver a garbage collection or a recycling service. And local governments can incur liabilities under an agreement. So they can lease land vehicles and equipment at favorable terms for a business to use for the provision of a service. So a regional district could lease property necessary to stage a garbage collection service and the property could be used under agreement by the garbage collection business in the provision of the garbage collection service. Local governments can also guarantee repayment of the borrowing of a business. So to use the example of a garbage collection service again, if a local government wants to expand its garbage service under a partnering agreement, they can guarantee a loan for the garbage collection business to buy more trucks, for example. Local governments can also provide a tax exemption for properties used in relation to a service provided by a business under a partnering agreement. So for our garbage collection service again, any property owned by the garbage collection business and used for the purposes of providing that garbage collection service may be eligible for partnering tax exemption. Next slide, please. So municipalities can exempt specific properties from municipal property value taxes for up to 10 years in order to encourage economic, social or environmental revitalization of an individual property or an area of the municipality. So, for example, under an exemption agreement, council could provide tax exemptions to properties and businesses that agree to exterior improvements in order to economically revitalize a derelict area. And next slide, please. And local governments can also create partnerships with First Nations via agreements to the economic benefit of both of the parties, so they can create agreements for service provision, operation and enforcement in relation to regulatory authority and management of property or an interest in property. Next slide. And so an example of this is agreements to the city of Pitt Meadows and the Katzy First Nation have with each other for the provision of water and sewer and fire protection services. And not only do both communities benefit from cost effective service provision under these agreements, but in this case the process of crafting these agreements strengthen relationships and build mutual trust between the city and the First Nation. Next slide. And so as I mentioned earlier, municipalities have broad powers to provide services, which includes services for the economic benefit of the community. And I think service delivery is an area that may get overlooked sometimes when thinking about economic development. Local governments are increasingly adopting specific economic development functions and programs. They also facilitate economic development through core service delivery like infrastructure provision for water and sewer and roads. And this is an important and I think sometimes undervalued contribution that is essential for people to live and do business in a community. Next slide please. So an example of a municipal service that more explicitly addresses economic development is a business improvement area, which is a service established by council where business owners finance activities to promote business in the area. So, for example, they may finance activities like removing graffiti, conserving heritage property, holding events like in Victoria, they hold a car free day festivals and markets to encourage people to come into the area and frequent the businesses. Next slide. And there are over 60 business improvement areas in BC. And I have just a snapshot of just a few of them here. There are several in the lower mainland and on Vancouver Island, some in the Okanagan, the Sunshine Coast, a couple in the Caribou, and then also a few further up north. So this is a fairly widely used tool by municipalities. Next slide please. And so like municipalities, regional districts have broad powers to provide services and many regional districts have economic development services that fund economic development commissions and activities and projects that support local businesses and benefit the regional economy. And an example of this is the central Okanagan Economic Development Commission. Next slide. And this commission is a service of the regional district of central Okanagan, which means it is funded by and accountable to the regional district. And the commission has a number of programs and that support existing businesses and encourage new business investment in the region. Next slide. So looking a little more closely at commissions, both municipalities and regional districts can create commissions through a commission establishment by a law that delegates some of their decision making authority to the commission and outlines the commission's purposes, such as, you know, it may be formed to operate an economic development service or operate and maintain a performing arts center. The councils and boards will sometimes create commissions when they do not have the capacity to undertake an initiative directly or they feel that a delegated body could deliver a service more effectively due to their expertise. And next slide. Another type of body that municipalities and regional districts can create under the legislation is a corporation, and they may choose to form a corporation to gain external expertise, achieve economies of scale. And in some cases, a corporation can allow for share control with other local governments and entities for a broader benefit. Next slide, please. The example of a share control corporation model is a lower Columbia initiatives corporation, which is a partnership between the Columbia base and trust and the five eastern most municipalities and two electoral areas in the regional district of Cooney boundary. And one of the corporations main activities is running investment attraction initiatives for the region, including an innovative marketing program called metal tech alley which many of you may have heard about. The metal tech alley markets the region's assets to the high tech industry, and as I understand it has been quite successful so far in attracting new companies to the region. Next slide please. And local governments can also create societies under the legislation societies are not for profit non taxable organizations that may or may not be incorporated under the societies act, and local governments can become a member of an existing society or they can incorporate their own. Next slide. And as an example of this and then you'll my shadow from the town of Gibson's will talk to you in just a little bit about the Gibson's community building society, which operates Gibson's public market facilities under a long term lease agreement. Next slide please. And getting into land use planning I will I'll hand the presentation over to Brent for that who will talk to you about how land use planning can be used for economic development. Good you might need to me. Good morning everybody. I'm suffering as a little bit of a cold so apologize for that. Maybe just a bit of background on public been in the public service for about 25 years in my current role for about three years working with Catherine economic development. And with another colleague done at Porter and First Nation local relations prior to that I had about 15 years working on land use issues. And the interface between the crown and the sort of the private built environment and on regional growth strategies. So that's why I'm going to give you a little bit of a background on land use plan. I'm similar to what Catherine said earlier in British Columbia our system and I don't know if there's any practicing planners on the phone. I don't know what this and if they work from other jurisdictions and come to British Columbia high degree of local autonomy. We provide sort of an overall framework for growth and development creates a pathway pathway forward for investment. And I think you know the planning profession and local governments in general, you know share the same interest of the business community as attractive communities attract business. The legislation does require some specific content directly related to areas of the economy, including sort of the residential commercial industrial and agricultural recreation and public sectors. If you could just advance the slides. So at the regional scale we have a tool called regional growth strategies and they primarily exist in BC's high growth regions. The coast of Vancouver Island, the lower mainland squamish a little bit area, the what we call I guess the Okanagan basin the three Okanagan regional districts and Thompson Nicola. The legislation was established in the 1990s to try to give us another tool to deal with sprawl and to try to get higher density. More development around sort of urban core transit. It's a framework that enables the municipalities and regional districts to develop a joint regional plan. It does have a required content around economic development and regional growth strategies in most regions have also spun off regional economic development strategies. So if you're moving into or you're you want to learn more about a region that you're in. If you're in any of those regions I just mentioned those areas, you may want to pull up the growth strategy and see what kind of framework it provides for economic development. Next slide please. Now the regional growth strategy tool is developed for the high growth parts of British Columbia and about 80% of our population is covered under regional growth strategy in those areas that I talked about. Other parts of the province, it's not really an appropriate tool. There are a lot of communities that are a little bit more dispersely settled and even though there may be growth, it's not the kind of growth that really requires strong coordination between adjacent communities. But that doesn't stop regional districts from developing other regional strategies. The one up on the screen here is from the Karewa Regional District. So there are other tools that regions can use this to work on strategies related to particular sectors. So it might be agriculture, maybe in the North, North Squamish related to growth in our agriculture sector of Pemberton tourism, maybe in the Kootenays parks, and these all support economic development. Next slide please. At the local scale, across the entire province communities, local governments typically have what's called an official community plan and if you probably dealt with it. Official community plans can be are used typically by municipalities and regional districts in electoral areas to map out plan for growth. They're not, even though they're pretty much cover off the entire province, they're not, they're not actually mandated. There isn't any timelines. But typically communities develop these and they, and they go through probably five year cycle of, of amending them. And the higher growth regions that may need to that do that more often. Again, they include economic development, vision statements. I found them quite interesting over the years to read as usually there's a lot of history, a lot of background. So if you have, if you are a business owner or you know somebody who's moving into a particular community, pulling up the OCP and having a look at it, gives you not only sort of a sense of where the zoning and where the preferred land uses are located. It also has got some interesting history on the background of the community and more and more also including more First Nations context. I guess the last thing I'll say on that, aside from a very few, we promise does not approve these as opposed to other other places in British Canada. So they're very much developed at the local level. Next slide please. So the first one I guess getting close to the end here. We appreciate in that in terms of moving development forward rezoning that process can take a lot of time effort can add cost to doing business. So the ministry did a collaborative process to look at the development review process and that's currently currently continuing to be underway and there's a report available. It's tricky because you have to go back to the principles we talked about in terms of local autonomy. So it's a precedent to sort of impose new systems, but we are encouraging local governments to find ways to look at their process for development approvals, make it as transparent and as efficient as possible. Keeping in mind of course that whenever you talk about a change in zoning or change in use or an increase in density, you're going to want to involve the community and that could take some time and process and conversation. Next slide please. But generally when it comes to land use planning, we'll be talking about in terms of your overarching documents or your OCP and your growth strategies. But then you get into other bylaws which implement those zoning subdivision center approvals, service agreements. We also have what's called phase development agreements in BC. Something that was introduced a few years ago really in those situations where council or a board and a developer want to enter into a project that has going to take a lot of time to build out. And in providing the zoning there are a number of public benefits that were provided so basically it's something that council and the developer can enter into to protect both the zoning and the provision of those public elements. It basically means that for a period of time, council or a board can't come back and change the zoning. And for those agreements that are over 10 years in length, up to 20 maximum, the inspector of municipalities has to approve just to provide that oversight. And I'm not sure that might be it. Do we have one more slide maybe to wrap up on planning? Doesn't look like it's going to. There we go. So Catherine on this material that she covered is available. I currently don't work in the planning and land use branch at this point in time, but we know all our colleagues there. So if you have any questions about planning, happy, happy to be a resource for you. Thank you. I guess it's back to Jessica. Great. Thank you guys both so much. I know that this slide deck has a number of resources as well for people to be able to look at. You can see links and more information when you go online. I, we have Emmanuel who's going to be presenting next, but we just have one question that came in for the last group. So the section 14 of the community charter allows for two or more municipalities to establish an interim municipal scheme. We in Kamloops are in the process of implementing an inter-community business license license program with the community communities around us. This also includes our neighboring First Nations communities. Does this section permit us to partner with the First Nations communities or do we need to obtain a special legal agreement to do this? So that question is for Catherine. It's cat. Can you hear me? It's Catherine here. Yeah, but you sound great. Great. No, there is a section in the community charter. I think I touched on it briefly in this slide about partnerships, local government partnerships with First Nations. I want to say it's section 21 of the community charter, but don't quote me on that. That allows local governments to create partnership agreements with First Nations as well. Does that, does that answer? Great. So if you need more information from Catherine on that the person who asked the question just follow up with her directly. And she'll be able to provide any information that's not covered by that. I think we have time for one more question if you'll just bear with me here. Is there additional information about these tools online and where might the information be found? Yeah, at the end of the presentation there's a resources section. So, and it links to a lot of the information that is on our government website. Yeah, there it is. So a lot of the information is there. But again, if there's something very specific that doesn't happen to be on those links, feel free to reach out to me and I can either direct you to a resource or just answer the question. Fantastic. Well, thank you again for providing the presentation and sharing that information. We are going to be moving on to the town of Gibson's. So I'd like to hand this over to Emmanuel Machado, the Chief Administrative Officer, and he's going to be speaking about some of the successes that they've experienced. Okay, can you hear me now? Very good. That's great. Good morning again everyone. Thanks again for the opportunity to be here. I wanted to share with you a little bit of our experience in supporting small business and happy small business week to meet small business owners in your communities. And Gibson certainly, the economic engine of our community is primarily provided by local business and we're highly aware of that. I want to do everything we can to support them. What I wanted to share with you is what types of initiatives we've taken to support our local business and follows a lot of the advice that was in support that we've had from the province and others as well. We started by sort of getting our house in order. Not that our house was terribly out of order, but I think in the spirit of continuous improvement, we working with the community went through a process of updating strategic plans and official community plans, other types of policies, including business license and so on. So I'll share a little bit about that with you. We, in general, are the other aspect of it was around financial sustainability that we have a lot of sort of funds to directly support initiatives, but we thought that how we price utilities, for example, that to make sure that we're collecting enough revenues to provide these critical services. It's been a lot of effort, but at the same time, the community has responded with support in light of seeing the reliability of the services that we provide. Also, in terms of land and leases, both water leases and land leases of property, we've been reviewing those to make sure that as a community, we're getting fair value for the community investments as well. And we've been pursuing in an effort to go beyond just taxation powers, try to find other forms of revenue. And I think that for small places like Gibson's, the community forest agreements could make a difference in our lives. And so we've been for the last while engaging with the ministry and others and to see about the possibility of doing that. Of course, you know, we're the beachcomber still very much part of our brand. And at the same time, the community is evolving and we have been trying to sort of demonstrate the type of community we are today. And natural asset management, interestingly enough, it's put us a little bit on the map just because of our efforts to meaningfully incorporate natural capital considerations into the town's planning and operations and decision making as well. So we're delivering services to our community with much higher environmental benefits because we're investing in a lot of these natural areas. And that also is good for our brand and for our livability. You know, the arrival of our breweries and other types of business that require good water and sewer capacity as well. Certainly it was timely because the town of Gibson's has seen a growth in that area. And so we've got several breweries that rely on our water and we've had to make some adjustments in our sewer capacity as well and we've got plenty of both to support them. In terms of other infrastructure since 2015, we've had fiber to every property on the Sunshine Coast and Gibson's in particular. And we're very thankful for the investments that cooperation like Ellis has made. And that I really was a fundamental part of our, of our recent growth, because we've seen individuals and organizations that had to go to the mainland. Go to Vancouver just to participate in the tech sector and now we can do it from here, thanks to the availability of fiber. And as Brent was mentioning a little bit earlier, we have certainly reviewed and improved our timelines of our planning and development processes being realistic as possible and keeping in mind that these investments that people make are considerable and at the same time we have responsibilities to accurately plan and be open and transparent with these decisions as well. One of the ways internally that we've done that is by, you know, really moving away from having a series of departments interact with development and set up internal teams that view it on behalf of the town. And we're seeing those improvements being based on sort of that approach as well. We have been part of the asset management work that we've been doing. We've been trying to make a better coordination between what we ask the development community to build and from these growing areas that we have and our ability to maintain those assets afterwards as well. So we have amended our subdivision standards bylaw to better align with our ability to maintain that. Team Sunshine Coast although we're a collection of communities so increasingly and more so than we've seen in the past we're working as a team and that's been very refreshing. We've got great examples in Sunshine Coast tourism for the last three years. We've benefited from the recent MRDT, those many years of work to put that together. And we have a better coordinated message and we've seen the growth in tourism very substantial and very consecutive over the last few years. The Sunshine Coast Regional Economic Development Organization is another example of a regional approach in this case to economic developments. We're not all completed but there's a series of work hubs that are creating very good opportunities for startups and others. The coordination of data and capacity and managing our brand a lot better as well. The political leadership has been very supportive as well as at the moment there are regional housing studies, childcare plans and water governance work projects in the works. There are with a view of providing the best service we can to as a region rather than just siloed into our own respective communities. About three years ago we've moved into a mobile business license approach and so that we recognize other communities business licenses and they do the same. And so we're trying to be a lot more business friendly and that also includes the Shishaw Nation businesses that I recognize here as well. And so it's no surprise that we've seen the number of business licenses go up which is somewhat counterintuitive and revenues are funny enough as well go up. And that I think we've heard from local businesses that facilitating that has been very well received by them. I think we're talking about the value of partnerships we the Gibson's public markets has been a major anchor to lower Gibson's it follows a regional study for on to try to find better opportunities for local businesses but it's not to be so much more than that. We wanted to participate in that and support. And from the beginning. Council had some principles that they wanted to sort of follow, including avoiding sort of inherent inheriting any additional or any debt obligations for that matter. And also not recognizing that we wouldn't have had the capacity to financially support the operations either. So those things in mind. Ultimately, after considering, you know, a municipal corporation approach or even a C3 corporation. But we determined that considering the organization that's there and to meet their needs and ours that an unprofit society operates under a service agreement. And we are in essence, our role at this stage is we're on 39% of the assets and where necessary with provided charitable tax receipts for donations as well. And the market is doing very well. It's like any new business. It's a challenge to get going, but the community has responded very strongly in terms of the support that they show. And it's not insignificant to what's been created there in terms of jobs. So we've got 52 new jobs in counting that eight new businesses and other startups that have even come from those. And because of, you know, the activity that the facility says the first year about 80,000 visitors came through that place. And so the is just the market is just one of other, you know, positive developments in lower Gibson's and upper Gibson's for that matter. So we were interested in understanding, you know, the interaction between lower Gibson's sort of the business area and the harbor, which we had never really fully appreciated perhaps. But there are over 400 direct and indirect jobs, the nearly 50 businesses that operates out of the harbor. And together they in 2017 raised over $49 million in revenues. And so we think there's that shows potential for the growth of, you know, both repair business and transportation related marine transportation and also recreation. Since 2017, we've had, by the end of 2018, I should say we had 185 new businesses that, in addition to what we had before, have taken a license in Gibson's and from what I understand, 2019 that were expected to surpass that number. We've also had, you know, the busiest development year in our history last year, and certainly are on track to have another solid one almost expect to be to the same level. Certainly for us participating in the small business BC, it's been very, very helpful. Like every other community was sometimes what all very visitors doing to work but I'm glad we took some time to work with small business BC and in terms of the recognition and the pride that has brought us having the validation. That has come from having others is looking at what we're doing and giving us a thumbs up in this case. Learning from other communities that have gone down this road and I feel that this perhaps reassuring for our local businesses that we're doing what we can to support them. I'll leave it there for now and I see if there's any questions that you want to ask and thanks again. Great. Thank you so much, Emmanuel. We have had a couple of questions come in and we have a little bit of time now. So the first question is, what is the structure of SCREDO? Who is partnering and where does the funding come from? So SCREDO for us is funded by local governments, the district of Seashop, the Sunshine Coast Regional District. Also the Seashop Nation in the town of Gibson. They have an annual budget of around $300,000 and they are in essence a society and they have an independent board and operated under a service agreement for the funding part. We have another question here. Do you think that the lower housing costs in your area have an impact on people in the businesses that are locating there? And have you had any issues attracting employees for those businesses? Lower housing cost is so relative. If you're starting up as a young person, it's very difficult to afford a house here. Rents have gone through the roof. It's been quite challenging. And even larger employers have a challenge maintaining employees because of the cost of housing. Of course, between foreign buyer taxes and other types of measures, we've seen an increased interest over the last couple of years in moving to the Sunshine Coast. And if you have assets in other areas that have a higher value, it's certainly attractive to move here. So we're working our way through it. There's challenges in terms of finding sufficiently mostly related to the affordability rather than the quantity of houses. There's a lot of housing projects that are approved, but not yet fully built. So over the next couple of years, we're hoping to see them improved. Great. And then just kind of one final question. The new businesses that are being opened, are they typically by people already living in the community? Are they new businesses coming from outside of the community? A lot of them are new, but over half of them are home-based. And again, you know, speaks to the value of the fiber optic. There's a lot of business to business as well. Not so much storefront based, but I think that trend is, we're seeing that in other aspects as well. Home deliveries and all types of other implications for what's happening with retail overall. Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your time and the successes that you've been having in Gibson's and kind of some of the approaches that you guys have been taking. Right now I'm going to switch over to our final presenter for today. So if you'll just bear with us, we'll just try and switch back. Great. So now I'd like to welcome Sue Adams. She's a member of the small business round table. And she'd like to speak to you about the Open for Business Awards. Sorry, Sue, I think you might be muted. It looks like you're unmuted now. Do you want to give it a try? Yep. Yes. I think maybe you had unmuted me. Can you hear me? Yeah, you sound great. Okay. Very good. Well, thank you very much. And what a pleasure it is to for me to have the opportunity to program was established by the small business round table in 2011 to recognize and promote BC communities that have implemented leading business friendly policies and initiatives to attract routine and help small business. Over the past two years, the committee and the staff worked very hard to review and renew the whole program so it's much easier for communities of any size to participate. The small business round table of partnered with small business BC and their awards gala. Many of you would have attended this fabulous event would be well aware of the celebration of excellence and the recognition and promotion. The winners received not only on the night but long, long after the event is over. And Emmanuel, thank you very much for the pitch as one of the recipients of the award last year. The vision of the Open for Business Awards program is that all communities across BC large small rural urban first nations are open for business. So the purpose is really to prompt to inspire communities of all size sizes to learn from their peers and adopt and implement initiatives that support small business. Secondly, to recognize local governments and first nations that their organizations have implemented exceptional open for business initiatives. So what's in it for your community we heard again the pitch from Emmanuel from Gibson's. It provides an opportunity to review what you've accomplished over the last while and to share your accomplishments. So it's always good. A great opportunity and great value in self of self evaluation of the programs that you're currently operating. It provides a great opportunity for you to tell business community to tell your business community that you're open for business. Finalists in each of the categories received two complimentary tickets to the small business BC awards gala which will be held in February where the winners are announced. And as I said before it's a magnificent evening with excellent opportunity to network and create awareness for your particular community. The news proudly this day the open for business logo again you saw Gibson's open their presentation today with the recognition that they were recipient. And so that logo you can use in promotional materials as a testament to the open for business culture entrepreneurs and business owners will find in your community. Video tapes to develop for finalists and these can be used in future promotions for your community. Before I go, I chatted with the mayor of Kimberly up here that he had accepted the award on behalf of his community and he commented. Wow, if I'd known what a fabulous event this was and the number and variety of business people are in the room, and the opportunity, the award provides to attract businesses to area I would have made a big pitch to move to Kimberly in my acceptance speech. So there's lots of value and participating in this program. It's actually really easy to nominate. And I think Jessica has another slide slide on the timeline. You can follow the steps in the best business guide, which I believe you all have a copy of. And we've made the submission process much easier to perhaps not all that easier for the adjudication process the committee does take the process very seriously. It's divided by seven best practices highlighted in the guide. So there you can notice on your screen the timeline. And by using this slide and the best practices guide. The process is laid out very clearly on the website. And of course, the small business department are happy to help you with that. A special note. I just had an update from the branch. We were sitting at 60 nominations already, but I understand from this morning that there are now 65 nominations. And this is a fantastic response. And another reminder is that your submissions are active for three years. So you can amend or enhance a previous case study that you may have presented. It still qualifies for consideration in that in the awards this coming year. So if you haven't before, if you haven't nominated already and remember small, medium or large communities are eligible. We urge you to do so now you still have a month and the small reminder that the small business branch is there to help you. So as chair of the committee, I look forward very much to reading your submissions. And thank you for this opportunity to promote and good luck. Fantastic. Thank you so much to for sharing that information with our group. I hope everyone takes some time to think about nominating their community and has a look on their website. There will be a link to that information when we post the webinar video as well. We will be posting this recording. I will try to do some edits because this, as you all are aware, wasn't the most technically smooth webinar that we've ever had. But all the information will be posted with those slides and you'll have access to that in about a week on our website. I would like to let you know that we have another web webinar that we do have coming up that you may be interested in. We are going to be providing a webinar that provides insights on the small scale licensed cannabis production in BC. So that's going to have presentations from a successful applicant for a micro license as well as people that are working to support the small scale growers in British Columbia through the community futures. And that should be good if you're a community that has people that are interested in it. You want to know more what to expect, what things look like. It'll be really interesting and really educational in that way. So you can register for that on our website or if you're already on our distribution list, you would have got an email for that last week. And that's all from us. Thank you so much. I don't see any new questions that have come in. But if you do have any, we will pass them on to our presenters and follow up with you if they haven't already been answered. So thank you again for taking the time to join us today and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thanks, Jessica.