What’s the future for Westlock?
That’s a pretty vague question that will elicit a whole host of responses ranging from unbridled enthusiasm to varying degrees of anxiety.
To remain vibrant and healthy our community undoubtedly faces many challenges and hurdles in the years and decades to come — some by our own doing, others by forces we have yet to comprehend.
And although it may seem cliché, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel to keep our community strong.
The answer is already here.
Inserted into this week’s Westlock News is our 24-page Small Business Week Section. Chock full of local businesses, it’s our take on the national small business week event which runs Oct. 19-25 — this is the 35th annual celebration of entrepreneurship put on by the Business Development Bank of Canada.
Did you know that roughly seven million people in Canada work in small business, or that last year 35,600 people became self employed and actually hired employees?
In Westlock, small business is the engine that drives our economy. Take a stroll down Main Street, or drive through the industrial parks — small business is the backbone.
The taxes these businesses pay help to pave our roads and keep the lights on at the Spirit Centre.
But that’s just one link in the chain.
The employment these businesses provide also keeps the engine running via the workers who in turn pay taxes to our municipalities.
No businesses, equals no jobs.
No jobs, equals no town.
Much has been said and written about shopping locally and as time marches on we are all faced with more choices of where to spend our hard-earned dollars. There’s no denying we live in a global economy — you can buy a shirt from Thailand, or a DVD from New York all by the click of a mouse.
But before you make that next purchase, scan a “thank you ad” for any local event and look at the list of donors — it’s filled with the names of local businesses. Again, the old adage that dollars spent here, stays here rings true.
Community means many different things, but without businesses, specifically small businesses, Westlock wouldn’t exist, plain and simple.
