Warden of the MRC Pontiac, Jane Toller, held a Pontiac Business Community Fourm in Fort-Coulonge last Monday night. The forum was attended by several business people from the Pontiac, representatives of the Pontiac Chamber of Commerce, the SADC and from the municipalities of Fort-Coulonge and Mansfield-et-Pontefract.

Toller explained that the purpose of the meeting was to give a platform for business owners to voice their concerns and offer suggestions on how both the MRC and the municipalities could better help businesses.

The almost two-hour discussion saw many topics raised by the business owners in attendance as well as some arguments.

Notably, the co-owner of Astra Estates, John Edelman, took the opportunity to voice his opposition to the so-called “welcome tax” in Quebec, which is a tax paid by new landowners in the province. The tax is essentially a delayed land transfer tax and Edelman said that the one he and his partner were charged after purchasing and reopening the Norway Bay golf course is a major impediment to his business’s ability to grow.

More broadly Edelman was very critical of the MRC Pontiac’s entire approach to business development and certain municipalities’ approach to supporting their businesses. Edelman stressed that the MRC and the mayors should come together and push for a common business development strategy for the Pontiac. He also said that both his businesses and others needed tax breaks from their municipalities in order to thrive.

This statement caused some backlash from the municipal officials who claimed that enforcement of the welcome tax was a provincial requirement and out of their hands. Edelman responded by saying that the ways municipalities can circumvent the welcome tax, like for example through grants paid to businesses that are equivalent to the welcome tax they paid. He also made a broader appeal for tax breaks and other support for businesses like his.

“Those 17 people that we hired are affected if we close, they’re not going to have a job, then what’s going to happen is they go back to unemployment, they’re going to look back to not being able to pay their bills and go back to not paying their taxes and things like that,” said Edelman, making a broader point about how business have secondary effects in the local economy.

Edelman’s remarks sparked a response from municipal officials over the constraints of what they can do and the demands of their budgets. Toller interjected that major projects, like a solar farm proposed by Evolgen or a waste-to-energy project would provide the MRC its municipalities with sources of revenue beyond taxes, which would give officials financial space to lower taxes on businesses.

Another business owner to speak was Caitlin Brubacher of Elephant in the Attic, a framing business and art gallery in Portage-du-Fort. Brubacher remarks concerned her inability to establish a social enterprise within Portage-du-Fort, which is a business between for-profit and not-for-profit and mandates a certain amount of reinvestment of profits into the social goal of the enterprise, be it charitable, environmental or cultural.

Being designated a social enterprise lessens the tax burden on an enterprise while giving it more flexibility than a not-for-profit.

“If we have certain objectives in our region that we want to meet, like arts and culture, or tourism, or stuff that’s helping children’s programs, these are things that we don’t really want to overtax and make prohibitively expensive,” said Brubacher. “We also want to support those things in providing grants and funding these micro initiatives.”

Brubacher advocated for creating municipalities to clearly adopt definitions of social enterprises in order in order to support their development in the region.

Another person who spoke was Jon Stewart of Calumet Media and Consulting, who focused his remarks on the need to improve communication about the resources available to businesses from the MRC, SADC and Pontiac Chamber of Commerce.

Stewart also commented on what he saw was lacking in regards to advertising the Pontiac as a tourist destination, specifically noting the lack of communications available in English to unilingual anglophones coming from Ontario.

Todd Hoffman of Brauwerk Hoffman Brewery also spoke and provided commentary on what challenges he faced during his time in business, which included administrative red tape, unnecessary and expensive bureaucracy relative to Ontario and a culture that didn’t support business. He also underscored how he saw ecotourism as the sector with the most potential in the Pontiac.

Warden Toller intervened in the conversation throughout the forum, offering a variety of ideas of how to proceed.

One notable one was to emulate the success of the MRCs in the Gaspésie region of Quebec. Toller explained how these MRCs went from some of the poorest to Quebec to receiving more than 500,000 tourists a year, which is the kind of success she would like to see in the Pontiac.

Toller also lauded the current efforts undertaken by the MRC which include working towards reviving forestry, debursing revitalization funds, and attracting investors for other projects.

While the conversation of the forum sometimes got heated, Toller said she hopes to follow up with more and better-advertised forums and committees made up of regional mayors and business owners to further develop the business development strategy of the region. Another idea she seemed inclined towards was harmonizing by-laws between municipalities, as well as just greater cooperation in seeking funding from public and private investors.

Overall Toller saw the night as a success, saying that she took a lot of notes that she would pass on to the Council of Mayors.

Jane Toller addresses the crowd at the Pontiac Business Community Forum in Fort-Coulonge last Monday night.

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