THUNDER BAY – The head of the Northern Policy Institute is urging businesses and individuals in the region to have their voices heard.
Charles Cirtwill on Thursday said it’s important to take part in a pair of Statistics Canada and Canadian Chamber of Commerce surveys to help prepare time-sensitive data as it relates to the struggles of the two groups fighting their way through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is a chance for everybody ... to tell government just how bad things are,” Cirtwill said. “We’ve got a lot of response happening, an amazing amount of new programs that have been created in the last four to six weeks.
“But this is our chance to kind of explain to them what exactly they should be trying to solve.”
If enough Northern voices aren’t raised, Cirtwill said the end result will be programs that focus on large urban centres like Vancouver and Toronto, and the region will be pushed aside once again.
These two surveys are particularly important because the big dollars are being spent by upper levels of government.
He said municipalities may be conducting surveys of their own, but only have so many dollars to spread around.
“The province and the feds have the deeper pockets here to respond and if we’re not explaining to them what the difference is between what’s happening here in Thunder Bay, or in Fort Sveren or Pays Platt or Atikokan, they’re not going to respond,” Cirtwill said.
“They’re going to design programs that work for the downtown cores of the big cities. Our communities are different. We have the capacity to support each other. We have much smaller businesses, a higher prevalence of those one- or two-person shops, and it matters.”
Having those northern numbers will also aid both FedNor and the provincial Ministry of Northern Development and Mines make critical decisions moving forward.
“They’re going to be the principle drivers, and FedNor is now working with StatsCan to get that data as soon as possible. So the more we respond, the better informed FedNor is going to be and the more targeted those responses are going to be.”
The business survey closes on Friday.
The individual survey, which will touch on economic and social situations, as well as physical and mental health, closes on April 16.
