October 26, 2009

CELEBRATION OF ENTREPRENEUR SPIRIT DAY

J. Kwan: Small business plays a significant role in B.C.’s economy. It serves as a job generator, innovator and producer of niche products and services. In fact, the small business community is the economic engine of our communities.

[C. Trevena in the chair.]

According to the 2008 B.C. statistics, there were approximately 384,300 small businesses in B.C. This accounts for 98 percent of all businesses in the province. In B.C. 1,058,100 people were employed by a small business in 2008. This translates to approximately 34 percent of B.C.’s gross domestic product.

The range of activities in the small business sector is varied, and a significant proportion is in the service industry. They include the mom-and-pop corner stores, to self-employed computer programmers to your local restaurant to small industrial operations.

There are 8,500 small businesses in the high-tech sector alone. That’s approximately 96 percent of all high-tech businesses in B.C. Virtually, there are small businesses of one form or another in all communities. They’re an essential component of our community’s fabric.

Last week I attended a wonderful event in my riding, where over $500 million in revenues generated by small businesses came together to celebrate Canada’s first Entrepreneur Spirit Day.

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Entrepreneur Spirit Day falls in the middle of Canada’s Small Business Month, the month of October. This event was hosted by cityMax.com. It was an opportunity for the entrepreneurially-minded to get together to celebrate, to share their successes and challenges and to meet with other up-and-coming business owners. It was an excellent networking opportunity.

It was also a time to just relax and have some fun. It was an opportunity to honour and recognize the spirit of entrepreneurs. Also at the event there was a fundraiser for an international microlender. CityMax.com sponsors three international entrepreneurs in their pursuit to expand their small businesses.

Attendees at Entrepreneur Spirit Day voted from 12 potential candidates, and the three international entrepreneurs chosen were a 49-year-old woman from the Philippines with a small business in the medical and health field, a woman from Ghana who will use sponsorship investment to purchase expanded stock for her fish store and a man from Bolivia who will expand a citrus fruit–farming operation with their microloan.

This is one small way in which cityMax.com, a small business in our neighbourhood, is giving back to support other entrepreneurs in the world. Their goal is to help and empower one million entrepreneurs throughout.

Aside from being a significant contributor to our economy, small businesses play a role in the social and charitable affairs of our community. British Columbians have a long tradition of donating and volunteering to support a variety of endeavours in our neighbourhoods. In fact, private contributions to community, whether through donations of time or money, have done much in support of the non-profit sector to serve their communities.

For example, in upper Mount Pleasant, the Mount Pleasant BIA’s contributions include: graffiti-removal programs; street cleaning programs; facade grants to assist in upgrading building facades; an economic resource development centre with resources for members; a beautification program, including provisions of banners, flower baskets, trash receptacles and lights; an annual business directory; and sponsorship and promotion of a number of annual community events.

The Commercial Drive BIA hosts an annual benefit dinner for the food bank and sponsors free family-movie showings in local parks during the summer. They have also trained the local community safety team to provide information about services to homeless people. This is just a small sampling of the entrepreneur spirit of the small business community and its relationship to our communities.

The Chinatown BIA community contributes by providing cleaning of alleyways in the district, graffiti-removal programs, providing security patrol for businesses in the area, organizing the Chinatown Festival, providing window decoration for the Olympics and organizing events such as an event around the Olympic Torch Relay.

The Chinatown BIA shares an office with the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association, which promotes Chinatown and Chinese culture. Some of the programs include printing tourist maps of Chinatown and the pedicab program, which transports people to Chinatown from Canada Place. It is estimated that these contributions have a value of $200,000 to $300,000 annually.

In Strathcona the BIA’s community contributions include sponsorship of the East Side Cultural Crawl, the Powell

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Street Festival and a number of smaller community festivals throughout the year — putting on a yearly sustainability expo which is open to the public, cleaning of the streets and alleyways in the district, providing security to area businesses and putting up hanging baskets on Hastings Street. The BIA also started an innovative program to become Vancouver’s first green business neighbourhood and is launching some waste reduction–sharing programs with its members.

The small business community is a lifeline to our communities. Let us honour and celebrate small businesses in our neighbourhoods, because when they succeed, we succeed.