Barb Feldman

  • How small businesses are critical to the recovery of rural towns

    Author Doug Griffiths travels around to small towns like the one pictured here, educating communities on how to keep their towns thriving and successful. Griffiths, who helped write an Alberta rural development strategy as a Progressive Conservative MLA, served in the Alberta Government until 2015 in a number of portfolios, including as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Minister of Service Alberta.

  • The reason why so many good restaurants fail

    The restaurant industry generates $75 billion in annual sales and employs more than 1.2 million people at more than 91,300 restaurants, cafes and bars across Canada, accounting for almost four per cent of the country’s economic activity, according to industry association Restaurants Canada. “Some places are open three months and then, bingo!” says lawyer Joe Solomon.

  • Do I need tenant insurance? Everything you ever wondered about insuring your rental

    Today almost a third of Canadians rent their living accommodations, and in some places that rate is even higher — about half of Quebeckers are renters. Students often don’t, he observes, either because they’re covered by their parents’ home insurance policy while they’re away at school or because they think it’s more expensive than it actually is. A standard Canadian policy usually includes basic coverage of $50,000 to replace contents, about a million dollars for liability, says Sharman, “which could come into play when somebody is at your apartment and slips and falls and injures themselves and you’re held liable for medical costs and so on after a lawsuit.

  • Banking on new immigrants for growth

    Canada’s population increases a little more than 1.2 per cent per year, and immigration accounts for about two-thirds of that increase. Canada welcomed 271,662 new permanent residents in 2015 in addition to hundreds of thousands of international students and temporary workers, and Statistics Canada projects that immigration will continue to be a key driver of population growth in the future. All of those people translate into big potential business for banks, and the major banks across Canada are vying for a piece of that booming market.