Southeast Manitoba is bucking the two-year trend of stagnant population growth in Canada, and hundreds at a business expo in Ile des Chênes this week want to keep it that way.
Outside the communities dotting the eastern edge of the Canadian Prairies, fields are being filled with apartment buildings, townhouses, shops and warehouses.
“It’s the rural life that people are starting to look at,” said Ken Tallaire, who owns T&T Properties, one of the companies building those homes and businesses.
“And that’s why the southeast and all these surrounding communities are doing so well right now — it’s just the affordability and a better life for the people and their families.”
Tallaire, whose La Broquerie-based company was the title sponsor for the ElevateMB Business Expo, says more red tape needs to be cut in order to keep business booming.
Construction by La Broquerie-based T&T Properties of townhouses in Ile des Chênes. (Christopher Gareau/CBC)
“You know, it’s frustrating [to hear], ‘Well, we could do it here, but you can’t do it there.’ But you know, your town’s only two miles away from the other one,” he said. “It should be the same.”
The mayor of Ritchot, whose rural municipality hosted Thursday’s business expo, agreed.
“We want to make sure that when you open up a business in Ritchot, you can literally open your door almost ASAP,” said Chris Ewen.
Housing and business success go hand-in-hand, the mayor said.
“Businesses are looking for ‘is there an opportunity for my employees to stay around home?'”
Minhas Brewery founder and Dragons’ Den dragon Manjit Minhas was the keynote speaker at the ElevateMB Business Expo. (Christopher Gareau/CBC)
Minhas Brewery founder and Dragons’ Den dragon Manjit Minhas was the keynote speaker at the expo.
She touched on one of its main themes: striving in the face of adversity.
A mom’s encouragement
It was a theme Ritchot’s mayor, who is retiring from politics this fall to focus on his business Perk Mobile Coffee Bar, said he knows well.
Ewen said he lost $250,000 in six months trying to run more traditional brick-and-mortar coffee shops in 2019, shortly after he became mayor.
“One day, we realized we had to close. The same night, I cried with my mom, and she said, ‘Don’t quit.’ And I kept going,” said Ewen.
“Now, I’ve been doing that coffee cart for seven years. We are all over Canada now. We do about a thousand events a year,” he said, noting he’s served coffee to the stars of movie and TV studio productions filming in Manitoba.
Other top of mind topics at the expo included investment in infrastructure to support growth in the region and the role of artificial intelligence in business, Ewen said.
This was the third annual business expo hosted by Ritchot, and the first with the new name, after it ran as the Edge Business Expo for its first two years.
