In It Together:
Bringing Back Canada’s Main Streets
Action Report

 
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In It Together: Bringing Back Canada’s Main Streets reinforces the value of main streets to cities and communities and assesses how they have been impacted through the COVID-19 public health emergency. It offers a set of specific proposals to sustain and bolster them through the pandemic and beyond.

The report is the outcome of extensive consultation and research conducted by CUI and its partners in a series of Solution Briefs, BBMS Block Studies, Memos from Main Street, CUI’s related COVID-19 platforms, and research, proposals, and ideas developed by BBMS partners and thinkers from across Canada.

The purpose of the report is to inform decision-making by policy makers at all levels of government, and other main street partners in communities of all sizes. It provides actionable solutions, options, ideas, and examples that can be used to support and strengthen main street businesses, organizations, and communities, and enable them to survive and recover from the pandemic crisis.

We Need Bold Action: The report recognizes that the job of bringing back our main streets will require bold action, ingenuity, an entrepreneurial spirit and new ways of working together. Policy makers and main street leaders are called upon to create their own action plan for their cities and communities.

 

About the Actions 

The proposed actions aim to address the challenges that have been brought on by COVID-19, and to correct some of the long-standing issues on main streets that the pandemic has amplified.

The actions are organized under the five key elements of a successful main street:

  • People - to draw people back to main street

  • Places - to create safe and vibrant streets and public spaces

  • Anchors - to support resilience of civic institutions and community anchors

  • Business - to ensure the health and recovery of main street businesses

  • Leadership - to strengthen governance, communication, and collaboration among main street stakeholders

Almost every action requires collaboration between multiple stakeholders, recognizing that the nature of main streets requires cooperation in planning, decision-making, implementation, and monitoring of progress.

Priority Actions

The Report contains more than 80 actions that range from financial supports, to research to zoning changes. Based on input and analysis through the consultation process, we have identified a list of priority actions from the longer list, that we believe would have enormous impact. More information and and a full list of actions can be found in Section 3 of the Action Report or in the Actions Summary Table.

Immediate Actions

  • Promote and support year-round sidewalk cafes and patios by reducing or eliminating fees, streamlining approvals, and allowing annual permits (Action 2.6)

  • Develop local plans, strategies, and design guidelines for winter-friendly placemaking and to encourage people to spend time on main street year-round (Action 2.7)

  • Develop creative solutions and financial incentives, micro-grants, and crowdfunding platforms to support businesses adapting to winter during the pandemic (e.g. tents, use of parking lots, snow removal) (Action 2.8)

  • Provide grants or property tax relief for live music and cultural venues (Action 3.1)

  • Offer financial assistance and waive fees for small businesses to mitigate the costs of COVID-19 (Action 4.3)

  • Redesign commercial rent assistance programs based on lessons to date, in consultation with the small business community (Action 4.4)

  • Work with insurance providers, industry associations and regulators to identify solutions to increasing insurance rates for main street small businesses (Action 4.5)

  • Extend and expand emergency small business financial assistance to address ongoing revenue and cashflow shortfalls well into 2021 (Action 4.6)

  • Collect neighbourhood level data to measure the economic recovery and inform local decision-making (Action 5.5)

 Next and Longer-term Actions   

  • Develop a national strategy on mental health, addictions, and street involvement; and provide increased, targeted funding to support collaborative partnerships that address these issues (Action 2.11)  

  • Develop a coordinated approach to occupying and animating vacant retail spaces (Action 2.12)

  • Review municipal permitting processes to ensure they support new business creation (Action 4.12)

  • Review and update municipal and provincial procurement policies to include strategies for local and diverse procurement (Action 4.17)

  • Explore options to reduce or mitigate the property tax burden on main street small businesses, such as by enabling municipalities to set differential tax rates or caps to establish new commercial property classes, or to implement split assessment that reflect current rather than unrealized future use (Action 4.21)

  • Mitigate the impacts of “highest and best use” by taxing buildings based on their current use (Action 4.22).

  • Establish Main Street Alliances to lead the revival of main street business districts (Action 5.3)

  • Create a modern version of the federal Main Streets Canada program to provide leadership that supports communities and local government in transforming and improving their main streets (Action 5.11)

  • Create a Canadian Opportunity Zone initiative to catalyze investment in main streets (Action 5.4)