The construction industry is the backbone of British Columbia’s economy, directly accounting for 10% of the province’s GDP and, when combined with real estate and related sectors, nearly 30%. Yet, as highlighted in a recent Kirk Lapointe podcast episode featuring Chris Gardner, President and CEO of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association, the sector is at a crossroads. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in construction are grappling with unprecedented labor shortages, demographic shifts, regulatory bottlenecks, and a housing supply crunch. This blog post unpacks the episode’s key themes, offering actionable insights and expert recommendations to help industry leaders, policymakers, and business owners chart a path forward.
Full Transcript (Generated by AI):
Kirk Lapointe 00:00:00 Thanks for joining us. Today. We’re tackling one of the most critical challenges facing every Canadian SMB the workforce and skill shortages. You feel it. We feel it. The talent is scarce and the demand for skilled people is only rising. Now, to help us understand how to turn this challenge into a competitive advantage, we’re joined by one of the foremost voices in Canadian industry, Chris Gardner. Chris is the president and the CEO of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association. The CBA, which has grown to become the largest construction association in Canada. As a fierce advocate for Canadian business, he spends his time directly addressing the issues impacting your growth, particularly the shortage of people in the skilled trades and the need for new training options. His work is focused squarely on the intersection of the economy, labor and policy, which gives him incredible insight into exactly what you can do today to secure the talent your business needs for tomorrow. Please welcome to the show, Chris Gardner. Chris, good to see you. Thanks for coming in.
Chris Gardner 00:01:12 Great. Thank you for having me on the show. Pleasure to be here.
Kirk Lapointe 00:01:14 Listen, you represent your organization represents such an integral part of our economy. And I want to get at the start anyway. Let’s get a little bit of a state of play. You know how competitive our industry is here in British Columbia with the rest of the country, with the rest of North America. And fill me in. Give us a little bit of an overview and how things are.
Chris Gardner 00:01:38 Yeah. Well, first at ICBA, this is our 50th year. We started in 1975, in the small town in trail, British Columbia. We’ve grown across BC, expanded to Alberta, and now we’re the largest construction association in Canada. So when you think about the construction industry, there’s a couple of ways to think about the size and the importance of it. One is just construction directly is about 10% of BC’s GDP. But when you add in real estate development. And the associated industries, that’s another 18%. So we’re getting close to 30% of BC’s economy is related to construction and building in some way or another.
Chris Gardner 00:02:10 And right now when you think of construction, there’s some headwinds. On the residential side we run into. We’re effectively we’re now going over a cliff. What was an affordability crisis in terms of housing has now become a jobs crisis, and we’re starting to see layoffs of electricians and plumbers and carpenters at a at a pace that we haven’t seen since the 1990s. So that side of construction is very challenged. The sort of industrial, institutional road building infrastructure side is still is still doing well, but there’s a lot of macro headwinds that that are facing the industry and the economy.
Kirk Lapointe 00:02:49 It’s been flipped on its head, and not so long ago, we were talking about labor shortages and the inability to get that kind of skilled Old help to build. what are some of the reasons here?
Chris Gardner 00:03:02 Well, you know, if you go back to your point, two years ago, if you had if I had said to a contractor, I’ve got, you know, five carpenters or electricians or plumbers, they would have been on a job site the next day.
Chris Gardner 00:03:12 And so now we’re getting to a point where a lot of these companies, because projects have been delayed or postponed. and they’ve worked through their, the projects that that have been, they’ve been building. So as they come to completion, the next project isn’t, proceeding. And so that’s forcing layoffs. And so if you think of, of construction, how the how the there’s about 250,000 people working in construction at the beginning of this year. There’s fewer now because we’ve had layoffs. So we’ve probably lost 10 to 15,000 jobs already this year. And that number is going to accelerate primarily in the residential side, but it affects lots of different lots of different companies in different ways. And and then you think of construction from the perspective of the demographic profile. About 20% of the construction workforce is 55 or older, so and the average age of retirement and construction is 60. It’s not 65. So over the next five years, we’re going to lose an awful lot of leadership experience and expertise. So, you know, roughly around 40,000 people will be retiring.
Kirk Lapointe 00:04:18 I want to talk about that transition. Demography of the industry intersect. but but it sounds as if there’s also a competitiveness issue here in British Columbia that it’s not simply a matter of headwinds, macroeconomic headwinds, but there’s also something that we’re doing to ourselves. What do you feel that is? Well, there’s a couple of ways to look at that. If you just look at.
Chris Gardner 00:04:45 You know, when you talk about productivity and innovation, it’s usually in the context from economists like output per worker output per hour. And so construction Is probably in the middle of the pack. If you look at all the sectors of our economy, I do think it gets an unfair reputation for not being innovative. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But the metric I like to use is because so much of construction is the discussions of revolved around housing. So in 1970, in 1972, in Canada, we we built about 240,000 homes. We will build fewer homes this year. We’ll build about 230,000 homes.
Chris Gardner 00:05:21 So we’re building fewer homes two generations later. So why is that? Why haven’t we been able to put more supply onto the market? Well, it’s primarily self-inflicted. It’s a regulatory process. We have, you know, basically compounded regulation after regulation after regulation and cost and process and complex building codes. We stacked them all up. So now it takes, you know, 4 to 6 years to get a major housing project approved in the Lower Mainland. and the regulatory burden is increasing. It’s not decreasing. And that’s one of the big challenges. And so it takes a lot longer. It’s more complicated and it’s more costly.
Kirk Lapointe 00:06:00 I always like it as an interviewer when the answers stack up. Some new questions for me right away. So listen, we’re supposed to try to build 500,000 houses in this country. We haven’t built more than about half that in any one year. I think that’s correct. 270,000, I think, is our house.
Chris Gardner 00:06:19 That was probably the high water mark.
Kirk Lapointe 00:06:21 Can we build 500,000?
Chris Gardner 00:06:23 Well, well, not yet.
Chris Gardner 00:06:25 Can we build 500,000 in 10 or 15 years? That’s possible if we do lots of things right. Are we going to build right now? Are we going to double the home building that’s going on in the country? No we aren’t we aren’t going to get there. You know, Mark Carney saying 500,000 homes. Premier David Eby is saying he wants to build 300,000 middle class homes. We aren’t going to hit those numbers. And because we’re looking at it the wrong way, elected officials. One of the big challenges that builders face is that you’ve got three levels of government. Now, primarily it’s a city. You know, it’s local government that’s that is in control of the permitting process.
Kirk Lapointe 00:07:03 Yes or no? Right.
Chris Gardner 00:07:04 So those are the and they also are responsible for development cost charges and community amenity fees and, and the Metro Vancouver layers on their DCC. So so a lot of this is local level. But the province has has a role to play. and and the significant role and then federally less so.
Chris Gardner 00:07:21 But the challenge is, you know, if you go back two years ago, then Prime Minister Trudeau decided to bring leaders from across the country together in Ottawa for a national summit because so much was going wrong. The summit was about auto theft. We’ve never had a summit on housing and housing affordability, and we haven’t even had one provincially. You know, David Eby hasn’t convened his housing minister and local mayors and builders builders and is are often left out of the equation.
Kirk Lapointe 00:07:52 What do you think’s holding it back? I mean, why wouldn’t you do this? Is it just that there’d be too much acrimony in the room and and you would. You wouldn’t get anything done. It would be a big kvetching session or would I?
Chris Gardner 00:08:02 You know, sometimes government feels they’ve got all the answers. And so, you know, Mark can’t go off in one direction. And David blew off another direction. The mayors go off in their different directions. All of this is piecemeal, very little collaboration, very little coordination.
Chris Gardner 00:08:16 And so as a result, we all pay a price for that. And so, you know, Syria might do something that’s really interesting, but it’s just Syria. And then Bernie might propose something different in a different area. That’s kind of interesting. But again, it’s just Burnaby. There’s no coordination collaboration across and between cities and the province. And that hurts us all. So and then if you think of it when when the Premier says, well, the private sector is fail to to build enough housing. So we’re going to get into the business of building housing. The reality is the province only puts about 5% of total housing stock onto the market, right? It is the private sector that will deliver the homes that we need. The challenges are often left out of the equation, and so if you want to know how to build faster, how to build more and how to build affordably, which I think is really the the central challenge of one of the central challenges facing our economy, whether that’s infrastructure, water, sewer, roads, bridges, ports, airports or homes, hospitals and schools.
Chris Gardner 00:09:12 ask builders, you bring a contractor to the table. They will tell you I have a list as long as their arm about things that are holding them up, codes that don’t make sense, regulations that impede building and innovation. And they’re left out of the equation. So ministers run around and they have lists and they have this program and that program. And those programs are often expensive and they don’t deliver the homes that we need. And you can see it. The proof’s in the pudding. We can see it in the.
Kirk Lapointe 00:09:37 Numbers almost every week. Now there is another project that I read about that is that’s being shuttered or abandoned or whatever. And this gives us an opportunity to segue into the issue around labor. I presume that in all of this, we’re seeing a flight of skilled trades to other jurisdictions where, in fact they can build, they can build. Are we losing British Columbians in this sector?
Chris Gardner 00:10:02 Yeah. The most recent data on this came in 2023, where you had 70,000 British Columbians leave B.C. and half of them went to Alberta.
Chris Gardner 00:10:11 And so why did they go to Alberta? Well, for the average price of a home in Metro Vancouver, you can buy two homes in Calgary or three homes in Edmonton. So you got cheaper housing, lower taxes and the same or higher wages. So if you’re in your 30s, what’s not to like about that equation? and so it’s a magnet that’s taking people out of this market into that market. And as we slow down, there’s that sort of like, well, I don’t have a job here, I don’t have opportunities here. I’m going to go to Alberta. In this case, they don’t all go to Alberta. But but Alberta is certainly a big draw. And so the challenge I think sometimes politicians forget about building a strong competitive economy that is open for investment and seem to be open for investment. It’s not good enough to have a minister of the Premier run around and say, we’re open for investment, when in fact a regulatory regime says something else. So we’ve got to focus on putting the conditions in place that will attract investment across the economy, whether that’s manufacturing or mining or our energy sector.
Chris Gardner 00:11:09 LNG, home building, like all of those conditions, need the right regulatory framework, a tax framework to be able to build a solid economic foundation for prosperity so that young people see an opportunity to stay here, build their careers and build their families.
Kirk Lapointe 00:11:26 Just stepping in for a moment to recognize our sponsor, Sprague’s group. Canadian small businesses are facing challenges like never before, and this is why Sprague’s group developed Vistara. It’s a subscription based support package gives you immediate access to senior HR, legal, financial and communications expertise at a fraction of the cost of a full time hire. higher. Vistara is designed to give you the framework and guidance you need to build a stronger, more efficient business without the high overhead. Click the link in our show notes to learn more about what Vistara can do for your business. Now back to the episode. Yeah. Somebody, though, pointed out the other day that interest rate or interest payments now on our debt are almost becoming a new program. Bumping classrooms, bumping clinics, bumping all kinds of other things out of the economy.
Kirk Lapointe 00:12:21 Are we able to dig ourselves out of this hole, do you think?
Chris Gardner 00:12:28 Well, I think yes. If we have elected officials who are willing to understand that this is a time for bold ideas and new thinking, different approaches, it’s not about a new program. It’s about sitting down with builders and and different levels of government saying, okay, what do we need to do differently? What is what? where can the province play, do something differently. And I think there is a role where the province can play and they have an important role to play, and that is funding municipal infrastructure. When you talk to local officials, they will say, we have no choice but to increase development cost charges and property taxes because we need to pay for more water and sewer and the other part and the other infrastructure we need that comes along with building new homes. And up until now there model has been and you’ll hear this a lot. Growth pays for growth, which means all of the cost of that new infrastructure is placed on the new home.
Chris Gardner 00:13:22 New home buyers. That model is broken. It doesn’t work. It actually doesn’t make any sense. So the province can play a role, rather than rolling out lists and rolling out all kinds of programs and regulations. Sit down with the cities and say, we’re going to start. We’re going to be a partner in funding municipal infrastructure. But in return, you need to do your part in approving projects faster and and freezing or lowering DCS to take some of the cost of construction. That’s the kind of partnership and innovation that that we really the new thinking that we need as it relates to City Hall. You know, one of the things that’s very frustrating is that there’s too much decisions that are made on any project in City Hall. So you get builders and developers and they put together, they hire expert architects and engineers and consultants, and they put together these very complicated packages. Then they submit them to City Hall. And that’s where good projects go to die. They get caught in a maze of red tape and regulation with under work staff, inexperienced staff.
Chris Gardner 00:14:19 And that’s why it takes so long. So if you’ve got these world class leading consultants and engineers and advisors pulling these packages, well, the process should be okay. You’ve got you’ve assembled a great team. You’re within the building code. Start building and we’ll come along and inspect along the way. Don’t have them review the entire package again. And what’s the point. So we’ve got to take some of that decision making out of City Hall.
Kirk Lapointe 00:14:43 Yeah. It always seems to me, too, that the experienced builder doesn’t get any kind of a break at City Hall, where, where you could say, you know, Chris, your company has done 75 different projects over the years. The 76th one, you go right ahead, right. We may come in and see it along the way, but get going. And we we don’t catch those breaks as, as industries.
Chris Gardner 00:15:10 Know. And that’s exactly right. And and there’s, there’s, there’s so many different layers of, of rules and regulations that ensure that what is being built is being built so that no one’s, you know, there’s no life safety issues.
Chris Gardner 00:15:24 You’ve got WorkSafe BC regulations, you’ve got building codes. So there’s more than enough regulations and they should be given a freer hand to build, but then have regular inspections and check ins. So get it out of City Hall, City Hall and Metro Vancouver and the province of British Columbia for that matter. Their procurement teams are really contract administrators. They aren’t filled with people who’ve worked for builders in construction for ten, 15, 20 years and then decided to go into government. There are people who started their careers in government have come up with in government. And so so they’re very good at administering a contract, moving paper around.
Kirk Lapointe 00:16:02 But they don’t have a grasp of the reality practically. That’s right. I want to talk a bit about though, the labor supply in this case, because it wasn’t so long ago that we were in this province looking at the necessity of about 1 in 6 graduates going into the trades, and we were well behind that. Where where are we now in terms of grooming the next generation of contractor to get into this with the skills that are necessary? Are we.
Kirk Lapointe 00:16:31 Is the gap still quite wide apart?
Chris Gardner 00:16:34 Yeah it is, it’s quite. We have not done a great job of positioning a career in the trades as an entrepreneurial opportunity. Yeah. you know, every every builder, every contractor that you can think of was started by an individual, a family. It could be second generation, third generation. Some of the biggest names in construction in this country started that way. but we don’t if, if, if someone’s in high school and saying, I want to, I want to start a business. Most high school counselors aren’t going to say, go to a technical school, learn a trade, get some expert and become a contractor. They’re going to say, go to university, study accounting, study business, and then get into business. And so we miss an opportunity to highlight the exciting opportunities in construction.
Kirk Lapointe 00:17:17 Is it just the the stigma? Is there a stigma there?
Chris Gardner 00:17:21 I think there’s partly a stigma, but partly just a lack of understanding and really thinking about what construction is, right? Construction is also a technology story.
Kirk Lapointe 00:17:28 It definitely.
Chris Gardner 00:17:29 Is. There’s $5 billion a year invested in application software applications for technology in North America. So if young people are interested in technology, it’s changed the way we design and build buildings. You want to, you know, work in logistics, in supply chains, understand how technology can help mobilize people and equipment. there’s there’s a story and there’s a career for you in construction. And so these are high, highly skilled, high paying, family supporting, community building jobs that we do not raise a flag in high school and say this is not a second choice or a third choice. This is equal to going to going to a university.
Kirk Lapointe 00:18:06 And isn’t it actually a speedier upward mobility in terms of your income and your and then your capacity eventually to retire?
Chris Gardner 00:18:15 Yeah, it’s a faster track to employment. It’s a faster track to higher wages and less student debt along the way. So there’s a lot of reasons to be considered in the trades. But we don’t market it. We don’t in a way sell it to young people.
Chris Gardner 00:18:31 So it’s appealing. And and so when you when grade 12 students in British Columbia leave high school, only 2% of them that next year after high school will go into the trades, and then over the next ten years, that number will move up to close to 10%. But we. And why is that? Well, people are trying to figure out what they’re going to do in life. They may go to a university, they may travel and they may figure, and then they may start working part time. Say, I really like construction. So they sort of fall into it by accident, not by design, and they lose some time along the way. But 2% coming out of high school going going into construction. that’s, that is, I would say, borders on an appalling number that the system is really the high school system has been really geared towards getting people into universities and not into a trades training stream.
Kirk Lapointe 00:19:22 Now for some time. Of course, the industry has, filled some of that gap with people from other countries who’ve come here, to, to do this.
Kirk Lapointe 00:19:33 Now we’ve got, curtailing of these programs. And what are you already experiencing in the industry around some of the difficulties that are ensuing as a result of some of the tapering of the number of people who can come to the country.
Chris Gardner 00:19:48 Well, you know, our immigration system is interesting if you just think of British Columbia from 2021 to now, every single year for getting immigration, natural deaths have exceeded natural births. So the population profile in Britain is declining, aging and declining. And so we need immigration. And then if you look at there’s two streams of immigrants really there’s permanent and temporary on the permanent side. Canada last year took in about 500,000. The federal government moving that number down will probably be over 400,000. This year won’t go down as low as they want, but in that group we’ve got less than 5% going into the construction trades. and then on the temporary side, that’s we’ve got international foreign students, temporary foreign workers and asylum seekers. That stream is primarily a low skilled stream. It’s we’re not we’ve done a very poor job of saying, you know what? If we look at our economy, we need doctors, nurses, long term care aides, we need electricians, we need plumbers, we need carpenters.
Chris Gardner 00:20:50 Let’s bring them in. We’ve basically focused on low skilled workers. And so when you bring in those workers, where do they primarily end up? They end up in retail service industry. That’s right. That’s where they end up. They get paid minimum wage. So we have now effectively what we’ve done in some for some companies, they’ve built a service model on bringing in temporary foreign workers, paying a minimum wage for a year or two and then sending them back like, so what we’re doing is we’ve got we’re working against ourselves. What we should be saying to those companies is invest in technology, innovate so you can do things with fewer workers, but pay those workers more money, create exciting opportunities because you’re getting more money, you’re working with technology and you’re being and we’re being innovative, but we’ve made it easy for them to just hire folks from other countries, pay them a minimum wage, and for where you need higher skilled workers. We don’t bring in as many as we need. And then we’ve got the whole credentials recognition issue, right? Yeah.
Chris Gardner 00:21:51 And we can. That’s a long story. But it’s it’s it’s a challenge. And we’ve got to figure it out and get it right because we have an ageing population and we’ve got declining natural births. So we have to get the immigration question right.
Kirk Lapointe 00:22:06 I remember speaking to a number of years back where you were, you told your personal story and you got out ahead. I thought of what a lot of other industries have gotten gotten into, which is, examining the importance of emotional health in the workplace and, and, and addressing it. And now you’ve got, you’ve got a program that I was reading about the other day that was 300,000 people that that you, you now have under an umbrella of really looking into and addressing some of those emotional health challenges that people have. day by day. And it’s important work and and, you know, you’re to be commended, I think, for your leadership on it. what impact do you think it’s starting to have now in terms of, in terms of changing attitudes among employers and employees about the value of this?
Chris Gardner 00:23:04 Well, I think we’ve we’ve come a long way.
Chris Gardner 00:23:05 And, you know, for we know in the the construction industry is it’s kind of like if you think of professional sports like NHL or NFL football or CFL football, it’s male dominated. All the players are male. And construction, when you go to a job site, you’re still going to see over 90% of the people on the site are male, and that that culture can be very hard driving. we’ve got to meet the deadline. We’ve got to meet schedule. We’ve got to get the job done. And if you’re going to have a problem, do it after work or on the weekend. And so the the focus of our program was really just to have people feel more comfortable to start a conversation, say, hey, I’m struggling a bit, I’m having a challenge here. And it could be, it could be, it could be mental health that’s triggered by all kinds of things a medical diagnosis, a divorce, financial challenges, pressure at work, a whole host of things can trigger this. And so we wanted to make it more comfortable for people to say, I’m struggling, I need some help.
Chris Gardner 00:24:02 And for the person who’s having that conversation on the other side to say, we’ve got resources where there is a program, there is help. And so coming out of Covid and we have about 300,000 people on one of our health and dental plans. We looked at the data and we saw on every single health and health plan in terms of the drugs that doctors prescribed, the number one category in every single plan were drugs for ADHD, depression and anxiety. And and it was a stunning revelation. So we said we were going to create a program to start this conversation, to remove the stigma. And so we we offer it free. We rolled it out in the summer of 2021, and we’ve now had 20,000 people go through the program. And when you go through the program and and then what, what what we’re seeing now is people saying it’s easier to have that conversation, say, I’m struggling now, I need help. Now, the trick now is, is the availability of resources to help works. Yeah.
Chris Gardner 00:25:00 So what we’re noticing is that, you know, we’ve now we’re knocking on the door and thinking of creative ways to get people in front of counselors and psychologists and, and other professionals to help them. That’s a little bit of a challenge. Our system hasn’t been set up for, the the numbers of people who need this help. But but I think we’ve made a lot of progress. Still lots of work to do.
Kirk Lapointe 00:25:21 Yeah. When you when you think of it, though, the other, the other side of it, the physical side of this, we all we also don’t count The construction worker as one of the principal victims of the opioid crisis and and what that is done. and I wonder whether you think that to some degree, understanding what what has happened here with people who have chronic injury, chronic pain, whether that has illuminated, for society, the, you know, the kind of breadth of the crisis that we’re in.
Chris Gardner 00:26:04 Yeah. You know, it. I mean, we British Columbia declared a state of emergency related to the opioid crisis in 2016.
Chris Gardner 00:26:10 And and you wonder, like, what did that really mean? Given where we are today, it doesn’t seem to have gotten much better. In fact, in lots of if you walk around most larger cities and towns in British Columbia, you’re seeing the devastating impact of that every single day. And, so we are we are in a situation where we haven’t we haven’t figured that out. And if you travel to other cities, what always strikes me is that outside of North America, other folks seem to have dealt with it in a different way that.
Kirk Lapointe 00:26:43 And what do you think they’re doing that we’re not?
Chris Gardner 00:26:45 I don’t know the answer to that, but here’s what I don’t think is work. I don’t think I find shocking that whether it’s and this, I think is a lack of political leadership at all three levels federal, provincial and local. But if you walk around neighborhoods and you see people, we seem to be we seem to find it acceptable, or at least we’re willing to accept that those people, are are destroying their lives.
Chris Gardner 00:27:13 They don’t have many of them don’t have the capacity to make a decision that’s in their best interests. So they are dying in front of us, and it’s just a matter of time. It could be months, it could be years. But they’ve destroyed their lives and and we’re not doing anything to help. And I just can’t think like. Like every time you turn around, there will be a some politician that says, well, we’re funding this program or we’re funding that program. And clearly what we’re doing is not working. It is not working. And so we’ve got to do something different. I don’t know what that is, but we’ve got to do something different.
Kirk Lapointe 00:27:44 Yeah. I want to conclude with asking you for a little bit of your of Chris Gardner’s wish list for, for mayors, premiers, federal leaders. if you could, you know, wave the wand. Right. what would you be looking for right now in order to make a difference that isn’t also taking us way off on on what we know are important guardrails for public finances and and and the economy.
Kirk Lapointe 00:28:17 What do you think is achievable that isn’t going to. Is it going to take us off track terribly?
Chris Gardner 00:28:24 Well, I think the first of all is is collaboration and coordination. The the three levels are going to have to work more closely together. They have to bring in industry as a partner. They’ve done a very poor job of that. You know, builders know where the roadblocks are, where the costs are. We have to simplify building codes and look at billing codes as a way to take cost out of construction, not add costs. And what we tend to do is just add another regulation. It all sounds good in isolation, but the cumulative effect of all those regulations is enormous amount of cost. And then we have to find new ways to fund municipal infrastructure at an enormous deficit. How do we do that? How do we do that creatively, to find new sources of capital, to build the infrastructure that we so desperately need for our growing communities? So I think if we started doing those four things, we would be heading in a more positive direction than we are right now.
Kirk Lapointe 00:29:15 Yeah, it’s always good to talk to you and you bring lots of great ideas to the table. And thanks so much for your time today.
Chris Gardner 00:29:21 Great. Thank you very much. Really enjoyed it.
Kirk Lapointe 00:29:23 And that’s our SMB report this time I’m Kirk Lapointe. I hope you’ve taken away some actionable insights today, something you can apply to your business right now to make it stronger, smarter, more efficient. Remember, the goal of the show is to demystify the future of business for Canadian SMEs. And so we’re here to help you navigate the market shifts so that you can stay ahead of the curve, not just chase it. To ensure you don’t miss any of our upcoming conversations with top experts, make sure you hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. We also want to hear from you. So what are the challenges that you have right now that you’re facing in your business? And which part of the future keeps you up at night? Send us your questions and topic ideas through our website or through social channels.
Kirk Lapointe 00:30:10 Your insights are going to help us shape this playbook for the entire Canadian SMB community. So thanks a lot for tuning in. Join us again next time for another deep dive into the trends and tools shaping Canadian business. Until then, I’m Kirk Lapointe and this has been the SMB report.
