Advocacy

Working for You

The Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce continues to actively advocate on behalf of its membership. Recent items to highlight include the following:

Advocating a clear path forward for the ICI sector’s waste diversion strategy Over the past several months, the City of Saskatoon has conducted a consultation period with various stakeholders to develop a comprehensive waste diversion plan for our Industrial, Commercial and Institutional (ICI) sector.

Input gathered from the sector identified several important insights. The first being the business community’s preference for a voluntary approach to waste diversion. Second, if regulations are enforced, it must be done in a way that is the least cumbersome to business and has the smallest impact on the

2020-21 Provincial Budget Priorities In late December, the Chamber started collecting comments for our 2020-21 provincial budget priorities. A survey was sent to our membership to identify the largest obstacles facing Saskatchewan’s business community, along with suggested policy positions that our community feels will lead to long-term sustainable growth of the province’s economy.

Through our survey findings, in addition to the Chamber’s extensive ongoing engagement efforts, formal recommendations and key insights were submitted to Finance Minister Donna Harpauer.

The priorities that were outlined throughout these recommendations focus on competitiveness, efficiency and growth. Key areas of note include the Chamber’s continued push for a competitive corporate tax rate. This is an area where Alberta is bottom line. The Chamber took this input and, on behalf of our membership, advocated for a waste diversion strategy that will work with Saskatoon’s business community and not against it. The resulting strategy was passed by City Council in January and includes key Chamber recommendations. With regards to organics, the following factors are of note: businesses that do not primarily, as part of their operations, produce organic waste will not be required to have an organics bin. No time-intensive and invasive site visits will be conducted by the City. This will cut down on the City’s overhead costs and save individual businesses time. As well, the implementation process won’t begin until after the residential phase-in of organics. Currently, the phase-in for the first year for recycling will be during third quarter 2021 with the phase-in for organics during third quarter 2022. Although the majority of respondents in the City’s engagement study indicated they would prefer a voluntary approach, the Chamber believes that the collaborative approach the City has taken has resulted in a reasonable outcome. Moving forward, the Chamber will encourage the City to consider the following: • Keep the implementation costs for the City to a minimum to ensure efficiency while maintaining effectiveness. • Provide clear guidelines to impacted businesses. • Provide clear and concise education materials that businesses can easily pass along to their employees. • Consider the implications of the space necessary to collect and remove organics. • Consider the costs to businesses and keep these costs to a minimum. • Monitor private haulers contracted to remove organic waste from businesses to ensure material disposal is in the appropriate location and not in the landfill. The Chamber applauds the City’s 70 percent waste reduction target, while at the same time is committed to ensuring Saskatoon’s competitiveness. We will continue to be a voice at the table when it comes to these important files.

increasingly gaining a competitive edge, as well as improving infrastructure investment to maximize their province’s ability to get commodities to market. In terms of efficiencies, looking at power costs compared to other jurisdictions and how these costs can have a negative impact on Saskatchewan businesses. We will evaluate the government’s move towards encouraging investment in the exciting field of small modular reactors and how this could have an immense impact on the province. Creating opportunities for business growth comes from workforce development, innovation and investment in the province, all areas that Saskatchewan’s Growth Plan promises to dive deeply over the next decade. Visit our website for a full list of the Chamber’s budget-related recommendations to the province. Prior to the budget’s release, the Chamber has set up a Provincial Budget Task Force to measure the budget in conjunction with the recommendations put forward on behalf of our members. A scorecard will be released to the public following the budget’s release on March 18th.