As a trade war between Canada and the United States continues the City of Kitchener is amending its procurement bylaw while officially launching a buy local campaign.
City council announced the plan at a news conference on Monday. A special meeting was held Monday night to make it official.
“Residents are obviously concerned in terms of what this will mean for themselves personally, how this might affect their job,” Mayor of Kitchener Berry Vrbanovic said.
The city is launching a “Support Local” campaign to try to encourage residents to prioritize, whenever possible, purchasing products from Canadian businesses first.
“It’s going to be about raising awareness amongst people in the community. People are already doing that. As I talk to people, as I talk to shop owners and so on,” Vrbanovic said.
City councillors gathered at City Hall for the conference on Monday, which took place in front of a large Canadian flag. Councillors sported new red sweaters with slogans like “Support Local” and “Keep It Canadian” on the front, and #ElbowsUp on the back.
Mayor Vrbanovic said while they can’t force people to buy local, the campaign will see banners put up around Kitchener to try to encourage people to do so.
“I think we want to try to make sure that we continue that awareness, that we support businesses and as we start seeing the impacts of tariffs going forward,” Vrbanovic said.
The city said it will also amend the procurement bylaw to enhance their support for buying Canadian and local. Officials said 98 per cent of the goods and services the city purchases already come from Ontario-based businesses.
According to Vrbanovic, the other two per cent tends to be items that historically are tough to purchase in Canada, like emergency vehicles, but said the city will look for ways to change that.
“We’re hearing that that is changing. Today, Toronto announced, as an example, that they were going to switch from U.S. procured vehicles, which has been where we generally have gotten our vehicles in the past, to a Canadian option that has become available. Those are the kinds of things that as we continue to go through this work we will investigate as well for our municipality.”
Mayor Vrbanovic said council plans to push for investments and funding from both the provincial and federal governments similar to during the pandemic, while also trying to keep things affordable for residents.
“By keeping any tax increases as low as possible and continuously below the rate of inflation. Those are the kinds of things that residents can continue to expect from us,” Vrbanovic said.
