Councillor Cunningham calls for the City and its residents to Buy Local to help with local business restart

The need to keep Prince Rupert's dollars in Prince Rupert made for a short discussion topic at Monday's City Council session, with Councillor Barry Cunningham making note of the challenges facing the business community and calling on the City and its residents to "Buy Local" to help out the commercial sector in these times of COVID.

Speaking as part of the Councillor's Comments and Reports period from Monday's Council session, Mr. Cunningham made the case to his fellow council members towards directing some attention the way of the city's businesses

"Now with some of our businesses that are opening up, I really like to see the City emphasize shop locally, these businesses have been so generous over the years to us, with different sponsorships, raffles and that.  And I think that it's time that we turned around and supported them and not just the residents of this town; but the City itself should be looking inward and supporting any businesses they can rather than having businesses come from Terrace to deliver stuff to us and that. 

I think we should be, the City itself should be, looking at supporting local businesses, as well as the residents getting out and supporting as many local businesses as they can. I think it's very important, our businesses need our help right now and I think that's something we should be looking at."

Mayor Brain took advantage of the topic to review some of the measures that the City has become involved with in recent weeks to reach out to the business community.

On the Mayor's list were the Small Business Task Force work with Tourism Prince Rupert, the Love Prince Rupert Initiative through the City's Economic Development office, as well as a partnership with Community Futures of the Pacific Northwest for a hotline to help local businesses, the Mayor noting that it has received 12 to 20 calls a day right now for assistance.

As for the theme of Civic purchases, the Mr. Brain observed that the city continues to put some focus on the potential to buy local for its requirements.

"At all times, the city is always looking for local procurement opportunity, but in this period of time all the staff and the departments have looked even further on how they can go out of our way to be supporting local businesses and reach out to numerous businesses on some our operations on that, so that's definitely part of that discussion and its a valid point too"

Prince Rupert residents can get a snap shot towards that civic dedication towards buying local when the City releases their Annual review of Financials next month, with the listing of the Goods and Services provided to the City.

Last years report outlined the scope of the city's purchasing power with 102 suppliers listed, with the City spending over 28 million dollars both in town and out.

The update on the city's spending in 2019 should be released in early to mid June.

You can review Councillor Cunningham's call out to buy local from the City's Video Archive starting at the 41 minute mark.



For a look at some of the latest notes from the City's commercial sector see our archive page here.

Further background on Monday's Council session can be found from our Council Timeline feature here, while a wider overview of past Council Discussion themes can be reviewed here.