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On the Front Lines · CityTalk Canada

• 0:00
  RAYE: What a difference a dy makes... twenty-four little hours...
• 0:13
  Mary Rowe: This is the City Talk Podcast, brought to you in digital bits and bytes by the Canadian Urban Institute, or C UI.
• 0:20
  Mary Rowe: I'm Mary Rowe.
• 0:21
  Mary Rowe: So, Labour Day, that's labour with a U, incidentally, has come and gone for 2026.
• 0:28
  Mary Rowe: And I have one question.
• 0:30
  Mary Rowe: Have you had enough?
• 0:31
  Mary Rowe: And I'm not talking about summer heat or summer storms because most of us across Canada have sweltered enough.
• 0:37
  Mary Rowe: No, I'm referring, of course, to what seems to be clearly an escalating trade war that's been occupying most of the bandwidth across our daily media on main streets, boardrooms, and living rooms.
• 0:48
  Mary Rowe: As you already know, U.S.
• 0:50
  Mary Rowe: tariffs and Canadian counter-tariffs will hit home to varying degrees on both sides of the border.
• 0:56
  Mary Rowe: However, there's one group of Canadians that stand to feel a particularly acute level of pain through this confrontation.
• 1:03
  Mary Rowe: I guarantee you know some of them because they're in your neighbourhood and you likely visit them weekly, maybe even daily.
• 1:10
  Mary Rowe: Together, they also represent one of the country's largest employers.
• 1:14
  Mary Rowe: We at CUI also know them very well through our ongoing work on Canada's main streets and downtowns.
• 1:20
  Mary Rowe: Yes, I'm talking about the independent business sector, also known as SMEs, or small to medium enterprises, whose livelihoods are for many already in jeopardy, while Ottawa's focus is geared primarily to securing big wins for large-scale business sectors like oil and gas, critical minerals, lumber, and the auto sector to name a few.
• 1:41
  Mary Rowe: But these SMEs do, however, have a key asset on their side.
• 1:45
  Mary Rowe: And he's my guest today on this podcast.
• 1:48
  Mary Rowe: Dan Kelly is the CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
• 1:53
  Mary Rowe: Dan, you know better than anyone, did I cover the current situation as you see it?
• 1:58
  Dan Kelly: I will say the other thing on top of all of the preamble that you set out is that this chapter of the trade war is the SME chapter of the trade war.
• 2:07
  Dan Kelly: It is almost entirely focused on products that are either created by, sold by, small and medium-sized companies on both sides of the border in Canada and the U.S.
• 2:17
  Dan Kelly: So this, you know, it was no surprise to us that the that the president selected this list of, I think it's 18 single-spaced pages of products to subject to 50% tariffs, because the view is the reason hockey sticks is on the exam on the list is to try to create uh some heat from small companies on government to get a deal.
• 2:40
  Dan Kelly: Uh so that is that is the unique feature.
• 2:42
  Dan Kelly: And then Canada's retaliatory tariffs as well.
• 2:45
  Dan Kelly: They are very much small business focused.
• 2:47
  Dan Kelly: There are 900 items, and those are the things that my members sell or rely on that they bring in from the United States.
• 2:55
  Dan Kelly: So, yeah, this is this is big.
• 2:57
  Dan Kelly: I mean, I wouldn't I am having a bit of PTSD from the pandemic here right now.
• 3:03
  Dan Kelly: I'm I'm not gonna lie.
• 3:04
  Dan Kelly: There are days where it feels so, so much like uh what we went through, just the the sudden nature of a shock, the the gravity of the situation for a lot of small companies as well.
• 3:16
  Dan Kelly: Uh, it isn't quite as widespread because the direct effects are on a more limited group.
• 3:20
  Dan Kelly: Uh the pandemic shot down probably two-thirds of my membership.
• 3:25
  Dan Kelly: This will affect uh probably, well, I've got 20% of small businesses that export to the US, 50% of small businesses that import, and in each of those categories, about half of the exporters or importers are affected by this round of tariffs directly.
• 3:41
  Dan Kelly: So it is, it's a big group, but it's not quite as big as it was during the pandemic.
• 3:45
  Mary Rowe: Uh and and as we know, the this is my own sort of mental health talking here, is that uh part of it too is that you don't know what's coming.
• 3:54
  Mary Rowe: Then I can hear people saying, if we just knew what Canada was negotiating for or not, but you can't know.
• 4:00
  Mary Rowe: I mean, it's a it's a it's a very precarious thing.
• 4:03
  Mary Rowe: Uh and the thing that's interesting though is people respond to these things so differently because other people just think it's a joke.
• 4:09
  Mary Rowe: You know, they it's they just think, oh, well, there he goes again.
• 4:12
  Mary Rowe: And uh, I don't know whether they're familiar enough.
• 4:14
  Mary Rowe: They may not have people in their lives that are trying to meet payrolls or trying to figure out what their supply chain looks like.
• 4:20
  Dan Kelly: And it's service businesses, it is retail, it is hospitality that is going to be affected by this too.
• 4:25
  Dan Kelly: I mean, good that the gut Canadian government did move on fish and seafood products.
• 4:30
  Dan Kelly: Uh, that that was a good decision.
• 4:32
  Dan Kelly: But I think it's like, well, wait a minute, we've got lots of fish in Canada, so no problem.
• 4:36
  Dan Kelly: Let's tariff that because we can just buy Canadian fish, not US fish.
• 4:40
  Dan Kelly: And then, of course, that forgets.
• 4:41
  Dan Kelly: What about the fish processing plant that's processing U.S.
• 4:44
  Dan Kelly: fish in Canada?
• 4:45
  Dan Kelly: You know, like there's these integrated uh chains, which are a good thing for Canada, uh, are right now being used as a weapon.
• 4:53
  Mary Rowe: This is where I think the ambivalence is so hard to square.
• 4:56
  Mary Rowe: Yes.
• 4:56
  Mary Rowe: Because on the one hand, everybody is receptive to more independence, more self-reliance, uh, not less dependency on one major partner market.
• 5:07
  Mary Rowe: But on the other side of it, we have our geography and the fact that, and there are so many parts of the country that not only have an economic geography, but they may have a domestic demography.
• 5:17
  Mary Rowe: They may have relatives that live across the border, or they've married somebody who's an American, or or vice versa.
• 5:23
  Mary Rowe: So this integration over decades, decades, and decades, it's hard to square that with the reality of our lives.
• 5:30
  Dan Kelly: The the example that I'm facing right now, just on the ground, that's causing a lot of pressure on me and my and and I would say within my membership, Canadians with the elbows up uh view are understandably angry.
• 5:44
  Dan Kelly: They want government to fight back.
• 5:46
  Dan Kelly: So if your tariff impact in your household is a fifty, you know, a 50 cent increase on a jar of peanut butter, but for a member of mine, the tariff impact is their business is on the line, that their whole family's future, and and maybe they have three family members working in the business with them, they're all going to be basically almost entirely shut down because their product is primarily shipped to the United States.
• 6:13
  Dan Kelly: You can understand why the view of retaliatory tariffs, for example, on the part of the person who has a tiny impact and the person who is their company's on the line may be very different.
• 6:23
  Dan Kelly: And I guess that's the part that I'm trying to get across to Canadians.
• 6:26
  Dan Kelly: We're not opposed to retaliate terror tariffs.
• 6:28
  Dan Kelly: In fact, small businesses are generally supportive of counter tariffs.
• 6:32
  Dan Kelly: It's the fact that the burden of that is going to rest very heavily.
• 6:37
  Dan Kelly: There are going to be people on the front lines of this trade war and people that are just cheerleading from behind.
• 6:43
  Dan Kelly: And I would ask people, Canadians, to give some thought for those Canadians who, through no choice of their own, are on the front lines.
• 6:52
  Dan Kelly: And this is in that respect like a war.
• 6:57
  Mary Rowe: It's so sobering when you put it that way.
• 7:00
  Dan Kelly: Yeah.
• 7:00
  Mary Rowe: And I think that uh my comment, you know, I'm a dual citizen, and I think that my comment, I feel like I can get away with saying this a bit more because I'm an American as well.
• 7:09
  Mary Rowe: But I think that America is just so much larger, and so many uh they're they're more accustomed at the local level to be at odds with what's happening nationally.
• 7:20
  Mary Rowe: They've survived uh foreign policy periods where they're at odds.
• 7:24
  Mary Rowe: They've survived economic periods where they're at odds.
• 7:26
  Mary Rowe: And so they have a maybe a higher degree of tolerance for it where we're here, smaller, and and maybe a different kind of set of values that it's makes us very uncomfortable to have this, at least I think lots of Canadians very uncomfortable to have to hear this constant, uh, as you suggest, even war-like language is just not.
• 7:45
  Mary Rowe: I mean, do you feel good about it?
• 7:47
  Mary Rowe: I don't feel good even here.
• 7:48
  Dan Kelly: No, no, no.
• 7:49
  Dan Kelly: It at the same time, uh I I do feel like I need to um, you know, I I was I was thinking about this.
• 7:58
  Dan Kelly: I was just on the phone with the minister, and I found myself almost apologizing for using uh controversial language uh uh with her.
• 8:06
  Dan Kelly: Like I I've referred to the government support programs as garbage uh publicly.
• 8:11
  Mary Rowe: Well, actually, but I was gonna keep going because I want to ask you about what kind of support we should be working towards.
• 8:16
  Mary Rowe: Yeah.
• 8:17
  Dan Kelly: Uh and and of course that got a reaction in Ottawa, and more than a few people have said, Dan, you know, if you're trying to get the government to act on this, don't use words like that.
• 8:25
  Dan Kelly: It just uh hurts the heart.
• 8:27
  Dan Kelly: And I said, okay, I'm on the phone every day talking to people whose entire livelihoods are on the line right now.
• 8:35
  Dan Kelly: Uh and and look, nobody's blaming the government of Canada for starting this fight.
• 8:40
  Dan Kelly: That's not, I don't hear that at all.
• 8:41
  Dan Kelly: But nevertheless, they are in full panic mode about this and worried about where this is going next, to your point.
• 8:48
  Dan Kelly: And and so I gotta reflect that in my public comments because they count on me to be able to say those kinds of things in the media and also my experience during the pandemic is if I didn't scream and yell at the very start of this and and extract a bit of a political price for inaction that the words were not matching up to the actions, if I hadn't done that, I don't believe that we would have got as uh there as quickly in providing proper support.
• 9:15
  Dan Kelly: So, you know, it uh I I've had to excuse myself for and give myself permission to show a bit of anger on aspects of this, not about the trade war, but about the pretty pathetic first rounds of supports that are available to small firms, despite the promises to have the backs of small business owners.
• 9:33
  Mary Rowe: I uh uh stole it from Michelle Obama, but yeah, yeah, a little slight modification that when things go low, we go, we go local.
• 9:41
  Mary Rowe: Because I think at a time when you just feel so much of swirling around over which you have no control, you know, you feel it's you feel helpless or even worse, hopeless, that where you can have some control is in your immediate vicinity, just as we did during COVID.
• 9:57
  Mary Rowe: And we know that people started being very uh focused on situations they could actually see that were out their front door, which is yours and my constituency.
• 10:08
  Mary Rowe: You can choose how you spend your money, you can choose how you invest your money, you can choose how you spend your time.
• 10:14
  Mary Rowe: And I think now what we need to do is recruit people to choose how they express their resistance, let's say.
• 10:23
  Mary Rowe: Because that I think that's one of the dilemmas with the tariff counter-tariff is it starts to get sort of silly, and you think, as you're suggesting, which I'm appreciative you say this, this you can tit for tat all you like, but it does have real implications for the SME sector.
• 10:39
  Mary Rowe: So let's talk a little bit about how do we encourage folks to sort of adjust.
• 10:44
  Dan Kelly: Yeah, and and it is, you know, on the one hand, you would think, well, buy Canadian, buy local uh should be fairly straightforward, but uh you do have to be thoughtful about this to your I get I get enraged when I see somebody walking out of Costco uh uh in a in a media clip showing, look, I bought a box of Canadian-made crackers, and I'm like, okay, you did you did half of it, but why are you buying it at the Costco?
• 11:09
  Mary Rowe: Why are you at the Costco?
• 11:10
  Mary Rowe: Even though Costco is an interesting model, it's it's not the worst of the of the bigger box ones.
• 11:15
  Dan Kelly: But you know, I would say, look, my advice generally to Canadians is if you buy from a local independent, you you're doing pretty well.
• 11:23
  Dan Kelly: Like that, that to me, whether the product is made in Italy, the US, or in Canada, uh, obviously if you go in and and and prefer a Canadian-made product in a Canadian-based independent retailer, that's the you know, that's the holy trin trinity of uh of local effects.
• 11:39
  Dan Kelly: But I I would say just you know, try to be thoughtful about this because there's a lot of small companies that actually like their product is importing something from the U.S.
• 11:48
  Dan Kelly: And that's what they've been doing for 25 years, and so it's gonna take them a bit uh to be able to switch gears immediately, and we don't want them to go out of business either because eventually we're gonna get a trade deal.
• 12:00
  Dan Kelly: I've talked to a honey producer in Manitoba, 53-year customer of his in the U.S.
• 12:05
  Dan Kelly: buys all his buy almost all of his honey.
• 12:07
  Dan Kelly: Honey's on the tariff list to go into the U.S.
• 12:10
  Dan Kelly: So he's now his honey is now 50% more expensive.
• 12:13
  Dan Kelly: And he says, Look, I know what's gonna happen if I lose this relationship.
• 12:18
  Dan Kelly: I'm trying to discount as much as I can, because if I lose this relationship with my U.S.
• 12:23
  Dan Kelly: customer, they're not coming back to me afterwards.
• 12:26
  Dan Kelly: Right.
• 12:26
  Dan Kelly: These are the kind of nuanced discussions that we need to think about when we're we're doing elbows up because we don't want to sever these relationships altogether.
• 12:35
  Dan Kelly: Reducing dependency, absolutely.
• 12:37
  Dan Kelly: There's I have strong evidence, by the way, a third of small businesses have trust started to purchase more or uh find customers in other parts of Canada.
• 12:46
  Dan Kelly: That's a fantastic thing.
• 12:48
  Mary Rowe: Are there other things, other policies that you could see us introducing and and that and that is are good things to do regardless of what's prompting it?
• 12:55
  Mary Rowe: So one of them is get those interprovincial trade barriers to be dropped.
• 12:59
  Dan Kelly: But more work has happened on this than, you know, I as as uh as you can tell, I've been around for a few years now.
• 13:05
  Dan Kelly: 32, 32 years in public policy.
• 13:07
  Dan Kelly: More work has been done this year in the last year than has been done in the entire 32 years prior to that.
• 13:13
  Dan Kelly: So I'm happy with uh with the trajectory there.
• 13:16
  Dan Kelly: Uh it won't shock you to hear from my organization that the other thing that we need is some positive messaging.
• 13:25
  Dan Kelly: Uh uh the point they made at the beginning uh is a very uh profound one.
• 13:30
  Dan Kelly: The government has been focused, the federal government, when the Kearney government crowd took office, they've been very focused on major projects and big business and international trade.
• 13:41
  Dan Kelly: Those have been kind of the three big economic files, all very good and important economic files, no criticism there.
• 13:47
  Dan Kelly: There has been almost no look at what's happening with entrepreneurship, small business, business creation.
• 13:55
  Dan Kelly: And Mary, this is the sobering news.
• 13:57
  Dan Kelly: This is not just a trade story.
• 13:59
  Dan Kelly: We have had now six quarters in the last two years where there have been more business closures than business openings.
• 14:06
  Dan Kelly: That almost never happens, even in recessions, that we have we have a couple of those quarters, but we don't have as many as we have had.
• 14:14
  Dan Kelly: Demographics are part of this.
• 14:16
  Dan Kelly: This is an all, I'm not laying all of this at the feet of government.
• 14:19
  Dan Kelly: Uh, and I'm hoping that that will start to be, now that we've got some of these major projects going, uh, greater focus for the the next bit of uh of Prime Minister's mandate.
• 14:30
  Dan Kelly: Um I'm I'm worried about that, but that's a big deal.
• 14:33
  Mary Rowe: You know, when you talk about business closure, I'm glad that you're raising that statistic and we'll get it and we'll put it in the notes for the uh for the broadcast.
• 14:40
  Mary Rowe: But um part of that is also a challenge around succession.
• 14:44
  Mary Rowe: That's it.
• 14:44
  Mary Rowe: That as you say, when you say demographic, so a per a family or a person's run a business for a long period of time, they want to they want to pass it on, and they can't find a buyer, or the buyer can't find financing to be able to purchase it.
• 14:56
  Mary Rowe: So I think this is another, I mean, as we know, with with these kinds of crises, just as we saw with COVID and a pandemic, they exacerbate or accelerate stuff that that were challenges that existed before, and then suddenly, wham, you realize we've got to deal with succession planning.
• 15:12
  Mary Rowe: Uh, and so I think as we come out of these things, and I hope you're right that we will uh uh come out and we'll look back and say, wow, hey, we need new vehicles to provide capital to young entrepreneurs who can then buy Jill or Joe's business.
• 15:28
  Mary Rowe: So that's part of that.
• 15:30
  Mary Rowe: And as you said, I hope too that the government will be able to, once it gets, you know, this there's this huge investment conference happening uh with it's fascinating to me, all the folks that are coming, but they are looking for large, hard infrastructure, high, a high ROI.
• 15:47
  Mary Rowe: Um uh I had heard initially the deal minimum was a billion.
• 15:50
  Mary Rowe: I think that's been reduced slightly, but you and I know that there are gazillions of opportunities below a hundred million dollars and in communities of every size, businesses, uh social enterprises, uh, infrastructure projects that exist in communities, and they're much smaller.
• 16:06
  Mary Rowe: So the dilemma for you and I is what are the mechanisms to get resources in at that size, that increment?
• 16:13
  Mary Rowe: How do we make the money smaller?
• 16:14
  Mary Rowe: What what are your what's your what are your members saying about that?
• 16:17
  Mary Rowe: How how do they deal with the fact that they're undercapitalized?
• 16:20
  Dan Kelly: We just uh just put a new slide in front of a couple ministers on that very question.
• 16:26
  Dan Kelly: And one of the things, actually, it's a conservative push that they've uh they've championed, and uh, and I think they're right.
• 16:32
  Dan Kelly: It is uh to allow rollover of capital gains.
• 16:36
  Dan Kelly: So if you have a business uh and you're looking to sell, you can not get hit by the uh capital gains effect if you roll it over into another Canadian independent business.
• 16:46
  Dan Kelly: Oh, that's great.
• 16:47
  Dan Kelly: And there's a lot of there are a lot of businesses that have done pretty well, and I'm happy for that.
• 16:53
  Dan Kelly: Uh, but if we can get that money back into more independent businesses, supporting a young entrepreneur or the next generation, uh, I think that that's a really wise proposal.
• 17:03
  Dan Kelly: And I do it's one of the things that we're pushing for uh as an outcome here.
• 17:07
  Dan Kelly: The other one that, of course, um uh I uh my my team says I talk about too much, but it is immigration policy.
• 17:14
  Dan Kelly: And I do worry that we've turned down the dial of immigration uh to such a degree that look, I mean you and I both know it's often new immigrants to Canada that come with some money these days and they're investing it in a business.
• 17:28
  Dan Kelly: And if we say, sorry, uh we're gonna have fewer of you in in the country right now, well, those are fewer businesses that are gonna make a successful transition.
• 17:37
  Dan Kelly: And if we lose that, if these businesses basically, instead of finding a buyer, wrap up, uh, God help the employees in these independent businesses and small communities right across Canada.
• 17:49
  Dan Kelly: I really worry about that a lot.
• 17:52
  Mary Rowe: I've been thinking, as I say, about the focus that's being placed on this investment conference and they're putting a deal book together with these high, high increment deals.
• 18:00
  Mary Rowe: And my uh, you and I can team up on this, uh, Dan.
• 18:03
  Mary Rowe: My uh idea is that we need an alternate deal book that talks about all the other opportunities that are of more modest increments to be able to invest and find and found businesses across the country because communities are organized around the economy of business.
• 18:18
  Mary Rowe: That's how a community forms.
• 18:19
  Mary Rowe: You know, it's not just people hanging around, it's people actually having some kind of economic interaction with one another.
• 18:24
  Mary Rowe: Okay, well, listen, as we finish, um between now and the end of the year, what are you hoping to see?
• 18:31
  Mary Rowe: And and I want to go back to if the government weren't doing garbage in addition to in addition to the capital gains rollover, yeah, any other particular initiatives you'd like to see the government be taking?
• 18:43
  Dan Kelly: So the three that I've put forward right now, two of them to respond to the emergency, one kind of a larger picture thing.
• 18:50
  Dan Kelly: Uh, one is I've suggested that we, instead of trying to fix the RDA programs, the regional development agency programs, that we create a program that would help small business so you get a refund of a portion of the tariff you actually paid in either direction, uh, up to say 50,000 US, 70,000 Canadian.
• 19:07
  Dan Kelly: That that's that's policy one that we're for the emergency for those directly hit.
• 19:12
  Dan Kelly: We're asking for some immediate tariff relief.
• 19:14
  Dan Kelly: These guys need cash just to keep the lights on.
• 19:16
  Dan Kelly: Secondly, we're asking government to fix the stupid tariff remissions process.
• 19:21
  Dan Kelly: If your product is unique but is on the list of those tariffs and you there's no displacement option for you, you should be able to get that off.
• 19:28
  Dan Kelly: Right now, we're having cases heard a year later, in the middle of a trade war, yeah uh for the tariff remissions process.
• 19:35
  Dan Kelly: I uh my joke has been to Minister Champagne that I think that there's two bureaucrats in the Department of Finance and a box of pencils as the entire team to try to fix this uh this this uh this agency.
• 19:46
  Dan Kelly: I want a small business desk within that agency.
• 19:49
  Dan Kelly: The third that I would say is it we need to help the broader effect of tariffs and to send a positive message to entrepreneurs.
• 19:57
  Dan Kelly: Again, won't shock you to hear.
• 19:59
  Dan Kelly: We're looking for a three-point reduction in the small business corporate tax rate, asking it for it to drop from nine to six, and I'm asking them to do that retroactive to Jan 1, 2026.
• 20:10
  Dan Kelly: We're getting lots of signals from government that this next budget may be more small business focused in the fall.
• 20:16
  Dan Kelly: I'm saying we don't have to wait for the budget, announce something now to send that message to entrepreneurs like, stick with this, guys, because there's a lot of people, you you said it at the beginning, that are wondering what's next.
• 20:28
  Dan Kelly: Do I have the like I haven't had a normal month of sales in six years since the pandemic?
• 20:32
  Dan Kelly: Have I got the firepower to stick around uh for through another incredibly turbulent period?
• 20:39
  Dan Kelly: They need some glimmer of light at the end of this.
• 20:43
  Mary Rowe: You know, I did a back of the envelope uh calculation, which in in modern times means I asked AI.
• 20:50
  Mary Rowe: Uh uh, I asked, what is the total COVID-related debt that SMEs are carrying?
• 20:59
  Mary Rowe: And it's about $45 billion according to the envelope.
• 21:04
  Mary Rowe: And but what's interesting, Dan, is if the government of Canada could create a vehicle to defer the payment of that debt, I'm not saying wipe it, although of course that would be good, have a Jubilee year for the debt, but uh white just defer it for 10 years.
• 21:18
  Mary Rowe: Take that $45 billion so that those businesses can reinvest in their business, which is you know they would, and be able to get them out of kind the rabbit wheel of carrying that debt, that the payoff would be probably 2.53 times what that $45 billion is.
• 21:34
  Mary Rowe: And that is a balance sheet correction that the federal government could do is to defer the COVID debt, which most banks have now, but just create a mechanism so that you could get that off your books.
• 21:45
  Mary Rowe: So and the other thing is I just want to push back quickly on not with you, but just with the world, that this idea that small is somehow uh diminutive and less than, you know, you and I are in the business.
• 21:59
  Mary Rowe: That the independent business sector is critical to communities and it is the underpinning of our larger economy.
• 22:06
  Mary Rowe: And so to just continue to remind people that there are no large deals without investments in places and small businesses and independent businesses operating at the local level.
• 22:18
  Mary Rowe: That's how we actually better than I could.
• 22:20
  Mary Rowe: Well, no, no.
• 22:21
  Mary Rowe: It's just how our life makes our life work.
• 22:23
  Mary Rowe: And so I think back to at a time when you feel so much is out of your control and it's hard to not feel despairing about this, to be reminded that we are so fortunate that we live in places where there are people making livings and creating products and services that you and I can consume locally in exchange with one another.
• 22:40
  Dan Kelly: I've tried not to be critical of the Carney government for the breakdown in the discussions, nor for putting retaliatory tariffs.
• 22:47
  Dan Kelly: That's what Canadians, I think, want uh right now.
• 22:49
  Dan Kelly: Uh but it's not without really high risks and with disproportionate burdens falling on some.
• 22:56
  Mary Rowe: You know, a dumb question from a non-trade, non-economist person, but is there no other way that we could be fighting here?
• 23:06
  Dan Kelly: There are.
• 23:06
  Dan Kelly: There are, you know, bans of products from the U.S., there are export tariffs that you've heard uh Doug Ford uh suggest that we say, okay, Podash, we're gonna charge a tariff of 10% before we ship it to the U.S.
• 23:20
  Dan Kelly: Uh it's just that, you know, do we want to go down that road?
• 23:23
  Dan Kelly: And I I'm very sympathetic to the the point that we have to worry about our reputation around the world.
• 23:29
  Dan Kelly: Carney's onto something when he when he's trying to make the world know you can rely on Canada.
• 23:36
  Dan Kelly: We're not gonna do these erratic uh policies hither and yon.
• 23:40
  Dan Kelly: And and that's uh and and so we we have to be careful about the long-term brand effect on the country if we were to engage too heavily.
• 23:50
  Dan Kelly: It unfortunately, though, it has meant that it is my members that are going that are on the front line.
• 23:56
  Dan Kelly: And I agree wildly with your last point.
• 23:59
  Dan Kelly: If every small business in Canada, there's 1.1 million small companies that have at least one staff person, if we had a if we were able to get every business to grow by every one of the 1.1 million to hire one person, think of the number of jobs relative when we're when we're looking at that against an auto subsidy that's going to create or save X number of you know 5,000 jobs here or there.
• 24:25
  Dan Kelly: And again, I'm not unsympathetic to that, to those industries.
• 24:28
  Dan Kelly: It's just that the scale of things for small businesses, they're they're often viewed as, well, we don't need to worry about them too much.
• 24:36
  Dan Kelly: And I have heard from more than a few that they do feel like the cannon fodder in the trade war.
• 24:40
  Dan Kelly: Like they're Yeah.
• 24:41
  Mary Rowe: What I like about your one plus one idea is just that we grow with what we have.
• 24:45
  Mary Rowe: And so to me, that's a very powerful message that we can finish on.
• 24:49
  Mary Rowe: Is that we need to be focused on investing in the assets we've got and growing what we have.
• 24:54
  Mary Rowe: We have this fabulous network of SMEs across the country.
• 24:57
  Mary Rowe: And how do we grow what we have?
• 25:00
  Mary Rowe: How do we invest in those in those businesses to hire a new worker to have more inventory that may be Canadian source?
• 25:07
  Mary Rowe: So on that note, let's leave with how do we actually, you know, the the Government of Canada has a program called Build Communities Strong.
• 25:15
  Mary Rowe: And I think we now need to add build economies, plural strong, build economies strong.
• 25:20
  Mary Rowe: So on that note, I'm gonna leave you, Dan.
• 25:22
  Mary Rowe: Thank you for joining us at Citytalk.
• 25:24
  Mary Rowe: And this isn't the end of the conversation, as you and I know we will talk again.
• 25:28
  Dan Kelly: Looking forward to it, Mary.
• 25:31
  Mary Rowe: So here's another reminder because it does make a difference.
• 25:36
  Mary Rowe: However much money you're able to spend these days, do your due diligence and when and where you can, spend it on Canadian-made products and services at retailers owned, operated in your neighborhood.
• 25:48
  Mary Rowe: That's neighbourhood with a U.
• 25:49
  Mary Rowe: Dan Kelly at the CFIB and all his members will thank you.
• 25:54
  Mary Rowe: As we mentioned, the federal government's Canada Investment Summit is being held in Toronto on September 14 and 15, with a goal to convince global investors to part with billions, also with a capital B, and invest in some of our key infrastructure and major projects.
• 26:12
  Mary Rowe: But as Dan and I touched on, there's a whole other economy.
• 26:16
  Mary Rowe: Maybe we could call it our ground game, of independent businesses along our main streets, in our neighborhoods, in places large and small across Canada.
• 26:25
  Mary Rowe: How can we find appropriately sized investments for those enterprises?
• 26:30
  Mary Rowe: Join us on the next episode of City Talk the Podcast to hear what Sean Speer, a fellow at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and editor at large of the Hub Media Center.
• 26:42
  Mary Rowe: He's sure to have a comment or two on reaching the other, or even the real economy.
• 26:48
  Mary Rowe: Speaking of which, we'd appreciate any comments you may have on this podcast on anything else you'd like the CUI podcast team to hear about.
• 26:55
  Mary Rowe: Drop us a line at Citytalk at Canorb.org.
• 26:58
  Mary Rowe: That's Citytalk, all one word, at C A N U R B dot O R G.
• 27:04
  Mary Rowe: I'm Mary Rowe.
• 27:05
  Mary Rowe: Thanks for listening.