the road to post-pandemic life will undoubtedly be a long and challenging one for Whistler's business community, and the heads of the local and provincial chambers of commerce are pushing for extensions to two government support programs to help ease some of the strain.
"We've gone from crisis to survival, and the government ... is certainly helping those that can to keep their doors open," said Melissa Pace, CEO of the Whistler Chamber of Commerce.
Pace, along with her provincial counterpart at the BC Chamber of Commerce, is hopeful Ottawa will listen to the business sector's requests to extend its Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, which offers businesses impacted by COVID-19 75-per-cent of their employees' wages for a 12-week period, beyond its June 6 cutoff.
On the provincial side, Pace is also pushing for a further extension to the maximum allowable length of temporary layoffs in B.C. This week, Victoria announced it had extended the layoff period from 13 to 16 weeks, which Pace feels isn't long enough for companies that heavily rely on tourism.
"[After the layoff period], you're forced to lay staff off permanently and pay their severance. We don't want that to happen," she said. "It will put us in a deeper deficit where the government support won't be sufficient anymore."
The added concern among resort businesses that have been forced to permanently lay off staff is that they will be unable to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of new employees once restrictions begin to relax, Pace said.
"That could be a challenge because we're going to most likely end up in a labour deficit," she explained. "The majority of our labour are frontliners, and had left before the end of March, so we still have lots of people living here, but is it going to be enough to support businesses in a few months?"
So far, Pace said some business owners have filled in the labour gaps themselves or with limited personnel. The hope is that employers will be able to incrementally staff up as business levels gradually begin to return, but it's difficult to tell what that could look like at this point.
"I can only tell you what we're going to do for labour when we know it's going to open," she reiterated. "How many people are sitting here waiting to go to work that can be put to work? How many people are we going to have visiting? How many hotels are going to open? How many rooms are they going to have? What is the occupancy going to look like? Until we really understand that then we really don't understand our labour needs. That's a big question mark."
According to the most recent Pulse survey, 63 per cent of Whistler businesses have laid off employees during the pandemic, and 65 per cent have closed temporarily. Nationally, 38 per cent of businesses have reduced staff hours, 41 per cent have laid off staff and 42 per cent said they couldn't operate longer than 60 days without a revenue source, according to the recent Canadian Survey on Business Conditions.
With Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry reiterating on Monday, May 4 that B.C.'s new normal likely won't include non-essential travel for some time, there's no denying that tourism is likely to be one of the sectors hit hardest and longest by the crisis, something Whistler Mayor Jack Crompton said the federal government is well aware of.
"I have the real sense that there will be some additional support to our industry," Crompton said during the chamber's Advocacy in Action webinar, held over Zoom on May 4.
"The prime minister talked about it again today, and my conversations with my federal counterparts are that they recognize the challenges that the tourism sector faces, and how unique those challenges are.
"They're taking them seriously and they're preparing supports that will be in addition to what else is out there."
Christian Thomson, CEO of Squamish-based Marwick Marketing, said tourism-related businesses would do well to bolster their digital presence during the crisis so they can be fully prepared once business resumes.
"For those kinds of providers, including accommodation and transport providers, it's about getting ready for the tap getting turned on and being present, particularly online, because it's going to be a scramble to get fully booked to bring those revenues in," he said, adding that regional drive-through visitation is likely to boom post-pandemic.
"If they're not operating, now is a good time to re-evaluate their digital presence, the functionality of their website and their competitors to see how they can maximize that return to business—which will happen, it's just a matter of when."
-With files from Braden Dupuis
