Kevin McHale
Kevin McHale spoke 115 times across 1 day of testimony.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Good morning.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Affirm.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Kevin McHale, K-e-v-i-n M-c-h- a-l-e.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Kevin McHale, I’m Executive Director of the Spark Street BIA and Mall Authority.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct, that’s the five blocks of the pedestrian promenade.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, I would say it was very minimal. Spark Street experiences a number of activations and protests and marches and such throughout the years because of our proximity to the hill. So communication was quite minimal. I think it was only really -- we started to receive some because some other BIAs and OCOBIA, which is the Ottawa Coalition of BIAs, starting making direct requests, as we were seeing this event starting to unfold, being bigger than what we typically experience in downtown Ottawa.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes. The fact that we actually received it was kind of -- I mean, to receive something, again, because I think we were demanding some more input and support as to what we’d -- what we needed to inform our members of. And this is again -- the information provided isn’t really any different than what we would receive for any other activation or any other event in the downtown core space. So it really didn’t meet what we kind of expected from a level of robustness.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
We expected to see a bit of a game plan as to what the actions were going to be to deal with the mass of vehicles that were expecting in the downtown core, perhaps similar to what we see during -- when road closures and such are put into place for an event like Canada Day, where vehicles aren’t allowed in the core for the day, and barriers or city vehicles are used to limit access to certain parts of the downtown core. So really what we wanted to see was an action plan of how police and officials were going to manage the situation.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, I would agree.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No, I would -- the feeling I have when I read a line like this, probably pre-convoy protest, would be that this is just kind of an open-ended protect yourself, saying that, you know, if some of the organizers decide to stay, we don’t know exactly. I mean, it’s not uncommon to see this kind of language, I think, in kind of an announcement like this. But again, our typical experience with other protests in the area are that people come, they protest, and they leave in a reasonable manner and where, at the time, when they say they will.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
That’s the feeling I had going into that weekend, yes, with the communication that we had received. Again, it seemed fairly low key from what we were receiving. My personal feeling was it was a little bit similar to the farmer’s protests that we had a number of years ago in the Ottawa core where a group of farmers came through and brought in tractors and other heavy equipment and were here for a day or so and then left. So it was kind of my feeling of it, was, again, having been on Spark Street for nine years and working in the core for 20, that this would be a loud boisterous weekend event and that by Monday morning I’d be trying to figure out how to clean up my street, which wasn’t the case.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct. Yes. It’s my own assessment. Again, that’s taking that assessment based upon the information we were provided.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No, I -- the response would be what Nathalie alluded to, which is that basically they didn't have the rights to stop the vehicles from coming in.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No, nothing written.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I can't recall. I don't believe the mayor participated on one of these calls. I believe someone from the staff was on the call a couple times. Really, on the political side, the call was driven by Matt Fleury, councillor for Vanier. And he and his staff hosted the call every day and there'd be mixing in. Councillor McKenney was on the call a couple of times. Who else?
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Mona Fortier, yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No, no. The MP for Vanier, Mona Fortier, was on the call as well, yeah. Joel Harden was on the call as well.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, he was on one or two calls at the very beginning, and then as the situation continued, he was no longer on the call.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No, generally, police representation was Constable Lemay, who was the community officer ---
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
--- was the primary police contact on the phone call.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Chris Ferguson.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No. No.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
M'hm.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
M'hm.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, I think, again, it comes down to having been on Sparks Street for over nine years now and having a very veteran merchant mix. There wasn't initially going into it necessarily a lot of concern. So I, you know, again, having a bit more -- you know, dealing with protests and activation through the core all the time, again, I was -- as I said earlier, I felt that this was going to be large and boisterous, but not necessarily -- not obviously the three-week event that it was. So we -- and again, Sparks Street, we tend to be a little self-sufficient. So we were very active on social media, making sure we were getting information from OPS and bylaw, as we were directed to through Coms, and which was said the fastest way to get our information oftentimes was Twitter. And so Catherine did reach out to make sure that we had gotten what we had. And so again, yeah, it was very much I think we're good. The members are aware. Again, my members go into an event like this any other protest, not thinking about closing their doors, not really worried about -- concerned about staff. At events, as we always say -- I always say on Sparks Street, people march up to Parliament Hill determined to get their message out, to tell people about what they need -- what they think that needs to be told and say their piece and they leave satisfied and happy that they've accomplished what they set out to do, and then they end up visiting our coffeeshops and our restaurants, et cetera. It was only kind of into Saturday night, Sunday where we realised this was a different -- there was a different energy in the crowd, if I can use that term, and that's when I get a lot of my businesses, who on the Saturday were open or trying to open. Regulations in Ontario were starting to be lifted and they're being ready to be lifted on the Monday, on the 31st, and so our businesses were kind of actually getting ready for the provinces to reopened and to welcome customers back inside their businesses after a very long January, or yeah, January/December. So again, I wasn't overly concerned. There was a very casual nature to the conversation, and that's kind of how I speak and how I flow.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
In hindsight, yeah. I mean, as I say, I was -- here, I -- you know, I talked with staff. Along Sparks Street, we have bollards that can be installed. We use them in the spring, summer, fall to control traffic. They're out right now on the street if you're out there today. Wintertime we have to remove them for snow operations. So we had actually taken them out back in November and so the street was open. And again, it was at that point where at the same time we were just sitting there say, "Okay, do you think we should put them in?" You know, we started seeing vehicles coming in, we didn't want them on the street for what we thought was just the weekend. So my event supervisor and I made the decision, you know, we -- you know, we had to dig out the holes, and they're all full of snow and ice, and dig them out and vacuum them out and we put the posts in for the weekend. And I think it was kind of a fortunate decision for us to do that because I feel like the street would have ended up as kind of a secondary holding spot for vehicles and other activities.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes. We had reached out to Constable Sean Kay, who we had a conversation with a couple of months ago for another activation. The constable's job is to liaise with marches and activations like that. So we had reached out to Sean to say "Do you think we should do that? Is it going to interfere with Operations?" Again, having a knowledge of the street, in the past when there have been activations or incidents, Sparks Street can sometimes become a holding spot for, or just a cut through for police services or other entities, Operations and such. So we just did a reach out saying, "Is this going to interfere in any of your planning or any Operations?" And he said, "No, nothing, so just keep -- just let us know when it's done." So we did that. Later, at the beginning of the week, I want to say about February 3rd or so, we had to -- we reached -- or 2nd, 2nd or 3rd, we reached back out to let him we were taking them out. They had done their job, they kept the vehicles off the street. The feeling was there was two things happening then. I felt that the vehicles couldn't move anymore, they were kind of jammed into the spaces, and we had snow falling, and so we had to pull them out so that snow clearing could happen. What ended up happening was there was no snow operations for the next three weeks, so you had a nice layer of snow and ice on Sparks Street that -- for the remaining of the convoy.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
We ended up removing them. And what we realised from observing the crowd, the vehicles and everyone around us, and the way the groups were operating is we felt Sparks Street was okay without them in at that point because we didn't think anything large could get in anymore. There was a lane for fire and such, but that was about it, and that was being respected by everyone. So -- and it would have been -- again, these were mechanical, all -- they're not all automated, it's not a heat system, it's a pretty simple system, but by that time to get -- to put them back in was going to be very difficult after a snow event.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
We had not.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Route.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, generally for Spark Street businesses, the -- for the most part, especially after that Saturday, the first Saturday, I would say about 85 percent of them just stayed closed for the remainder of the protest and for the week afterwards. It was difficult for them. I mean, businesses that were open would suddenly end up with five, 10, 15 people in the store unmasked wanting to use the bathroom, or just to warm up, not actually getting any services, especially if it was a retail business. Food businesses initially in that first weekend, you know, reported me to -- staff would report to me that they had difficulty managing the customers coming in. Businesses were, of course, were under the regulations for the closure and such, so if they were allowing customers in, those customers had to be masked, there was limits on what they could do. It was impossible for them to enforce it. And that was something I think we did bring up on one of the calls eventually, which was -- and then, again, initially we were told, “No, it’s up to the business to enforce that. The business has to make the decision whether they’re going to stay open or closed. It’s up on the business.” And then it was brought to their attention it’s quite impossible for a single shop owner to police five or six people who are in -- determined not to follow the local health ordinances. So we did get some clarity on that, that eventually the -- it would be in the best judgement of the bylaw officer whether or not they would impose a fine on the business or a warning.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No. None of my members reported anything.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
M’hm.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No. When this started getting bigger than it was, I was talking to my Chair specifically about this, he’s been downtown as a business operator for over 50 years and has never closed his business. That would include during the G20 Summit when it was here a number of years ago, and other activations. It’s never occurred to them to close during any event before. This was the first time where he felt concern for his safety and any staff he were to bring in during that time, which led to him closing his business.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, a business of mine who was publicly against the convoy as it was interfering with their business had their Google Review attacked. So they suddenly randomly started getting one-star reviews on their business, and that’s something that’s very difficult for a business to -- it’s an easy thing for someone to do if they’re ticked off, somebody to give someone a one-star review, but in this day and age of internet reviews and such, those things are so important to a business, and suddenly a business that had a four and a half star rating was suddenly trending at, I believe at like two, two and a half, which is -- there’s no -- it’s difficult to recover from anything like that and it’s very difficult to go to the providers, the Yelps and that and say, these are all fraudulent reviews. This is a bike shop owner and so his business at that time of the year is very quiet anyways, but he does have some customers coming in doing maintenance during the wintertime and such and the intention was to be open for his mechanics to do work through the winter, and during this period it was just impossible.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Go.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I just think it’s difficult to explain because -- it’s been very difficult sometimes for us to explain how devastating it's been for our business community and the downtown core. You know, I prime example I think was an example that was about halfway through the event I'm in line that night, after spending 12 hours on the street, in the line at a coffee shop in Kanata, just to pick up some coffee for the next morning for my family, and I'm looking inside this coffee shop and I’m seeing customers inside. And immediately my brain said, “Oh my God, they’re in violation of the health orders”, da, da, da, and then I realized, no, the rest of the province has been allowed to open, it's just downtown Ottawa. And I think that's the effect that this had, was because this activation happened for as long as it did, police directed the residents and visitors to not come downtown. It's something we still deal with today with the Wellington closure and such, and the reputation of the city and the downtown. We've already seen in tourism numbers this summer, they are down. We’re continuing to see that the reputation of the city has been -- as a place to visit, has been greatly tarnished and it's going to take us years to truly recover from that in the downtown core, if we ever do.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I can't comment on the total, but I could state that the majority of my Main Street businesses -- my storefront businesses did apply to the fund.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Within reason, yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes, on occasion we've been told about how the levels of cooperation between the organizers and City officials, so, yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
It's fair.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I agree with that.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I'd agree with that.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I would agree with that.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I would.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
That's correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Many chose to close based upon what information or lack of information was provided to them, yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
M'hm.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I see that, yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, information was being sent to us and other organizations, yeah.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Dates are correct, yeah.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes, he’s not mine.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes, sorry.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, as we always check regardless.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes. We’d get other emails similar in nature and broadness.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I would say at the end of the occupation there was a larger police presence than before. I would say that from my vantage point, where my office was and where I’m located, that the police presence throughout didn’t appear to be much larger to me, visually, compared to other events.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I would say that the call initiated by Mat Fleury’s, and his office, allowed us to have a daily conversation with a community officer, or occasionally somebody slightly higher in rank. I would say that throughout that, we didn’t receive any additional insight or information more than what was being released in press releases during that time.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Almost daily, as long as they weren’t being pulled into some other action or meeting.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Clearly.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, again, we held about 30 some of these calls, so I can’t remember all, but I can -- would absolutely state that he was on at least one call.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Sure. Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Possibly two. And again, I apologize ---
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
--- that -- we had a lot of them.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
No.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Good afternoon.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
A couple of businesses, we have -- you know, we have a number of tourist shops on Sparks Street, so the owner reported, you know, he sold a lot of Canadian flags. They were moving out of the store very quickly. It's a product he sells regularly. But -- and then we had some eateries that would try to open and try to close, in particular in that first weekend. Again, they were just trying to serve customers. And some actually even saw it as a potential opportunity because again we had been under this unexpected lockdown over the Christmas season and through January. My members, we were all set to host Winterlude, which is a massive event here in the City of Ottawa, and my members, we had just found out a couple of weeks before that it had been cancelled because of the COVID surge. So a lot of my businesses were like seeing that, oh, maybe there's an opportunity again on a weekend to make some money. But the ones that did stay -- did open, most -- the vast majority just found it just impossible to manage the crowd and keep their staff safe and to avoid confrontation in their stores.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Very much so.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Correct.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
I didn't specifically hear that. A lot of the businesses, again, many of our businesses because of COVID didn't have staff. Where they'd have two and three staff working a sandwich shop, for example, it was down to just the owner of the business. So that owner would try to make a go of it on their own, but that would be the unmanageableness of -- I mean, there's still limitations on the number of people in your business, and then again, you -- getting a large group of people in your place and trying to manage that crowd, it was quite difficult for them.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Right.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, advisory to citizens was to avoid the downtown area if possible, which a vast majority of people just take as stay away. And we've seen that twice now with the motorcycle event a few months later and some other activations now. But businesses never get that instruction. The instruction to business has always been business owner must make that decision on -- with their best judgement. And so that can be very difficult for a business. Again, they feel the pressure to, if they do have staff, keep their staff. They don't want to cut their hours, but business has been so hard and so how do you -- you know, if you do have staff now you're paying them, it's coming out of your pocket, it's been -- economically it's been a very difficult two years for small business, and -- so it's hard to make those decisions. So even when they would try to just open themselves, again, you would just -- no one was coming into the businesses to buy per se, certainly on the retail and service side, they were just coming in to warm up and see if they could use the bathroom more often than not.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
M'hm.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
You can contact the Google or Yelp and look to provide evidence as to why that could happen.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
They're a bit of a beast to deal with, yes.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
M'hm.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Yeah, the -- I would just -- I go back to the Canada Day as a prime example or Remembrance Day as an example where road closures are in place to allow the celebration of Canada Day or support our veterans and our past veterans, where there's a memo come out with road closures and et cetera, et cetera. It's pretty standard, in the corp. It's very rare that I would get something, per se, from OPS, which is very detailed. I mean, we saw that note come out that said call 9-1-1 or call 3-1-1. That's pretty standard in Ottawa for years that that's what you -- that's how you triage everything here. So but in terms of actually having a Zoom call or a specific communication going just to BIAs in our area specifically around Parliament Hill, which would be myself, Bank Street and Byward, no. I don't often get much.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Well, there were limitations on how much coverage there was, so each business was 15,000 total. So -- which depending on the size of business, so while, you know, you may not have hit the full use of the fund, an individual business may have only incurred 2 or $3,000 of expenses during that time, it didn't cover potential lost sales, as an example. So that's obviously a big thing, so you weren't able to factor in your gross revenues lost that you could compare to a couple years ago or year before. Your rent may not have been the full coverage amount. The other side would be is that a larger operator, a large independent restaurant would potentially -- the rent would be $10,000. So the 10,000 or $15,000 was really insignificant to their operating costs. So it was -- I would say that the majority of my members did -- absolutely benefitted from that funding. It was very much appreciated, especially in the way -- how quickly it flowed into the downtown businesses that were affected -- I'll use the word unprecedented positively in the sense of how quickly it came in. Unfortunately, for a lot of businesses, it didn't quite meet what they needed in order to make the recovery from the three, four weeks of business loss. I would also say that because businesses specifically on Sparks Street were actually fenced in after the protesters, an activation was moved because the security perimeter was kept up for an additional week. So there was a lot of limited -- a number of businesses in the downtown core were affected for a week after the occupation was done.
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Kevin McHale, Executive Director (Sparks BIA)
Thank you.