The City of Barrie is receiving $180,000 in provincial funding to help local businesses expand into international markets as tariffs continue to disrupt trade between Canada and the United States.
The funding, announced by local MPPs on Friday, comes from Ontario's $40-million Trade-Impacted Communities Program (TICP), which launched last year.
It will support the Export Development Initiative, which aims to help local companies identify new markets and establish international business connections as the impact of U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods mounts.
"It means helping a neighbor. It means helping a friend. It means helping a parent, a grandparent continue to secure their job and secure our local economy," Barrie-Innisfil MPP Andrea Khanjin said.
Part of the work will include a Trade Accelerator program to be launched by Invest Barrie with the first cohort in the fall in collaboration with the Toronto Region Board of Trade, City of Orillia, and County of Simcoe.
"It will give them access to resources, expertise, there'll be mentorship that follows, and then further support as it relates to getting some market access," Stephannie Schlichter, director of Invest Barrie, told Barrie360. "We will be looking to support the facilitators and then supporting companies with getting those connection points."
The initiative will happen over two years.
Fifty per cent U.S. tariffs on Canadian exports that came into effect on Saturday morning target sectors such as dairy, alcoholic beverages, and manufactured and consumer goods (including electronics, agricultural products, and more).
Previous duties on metals, automobiles, and lumber are still in effect as well at varying rates.
As a result, diversifying clientele in international markets outside the United States will be key for many businesses moving forward.
"Part of the messaging that our companies [have] is 'where else can I take my goods where there's opportunity for me to sell?'" Stephannie Schlichter, director of Invest Barrie, told Barrie360. "This program is really designed to help them identify new targets and make the connections they need to go into those new markets and be successful."
Schlichter says businesses interested in participating will be able to apply through Invest Barrie.
The Toronto Region Board of Trade's website says that businesses looking to take part in the program must generate at least $500,000 in annual revenue or have at least $1 million in invested capital, have an established product or service with market fit, have been operating for at least two years, and be committed to dedicating time and leadership attention to export planning.
Black Controls, an industrial automation company based in Barrie, has 29 past and present clients and projects internationally — 11 of them in the United States — on its website. The company's president, Rick Black, says U.S. tariffs are increasing the cost of some goods his company purchases from south of the borded, while Canada's retaliatory tariffs could make American customers more hesitant to purchase from Canadian companies like his.
"It's not only on the exporting or the sales side of the business," he told Barrie360. "It's also on us potentially purchasing things that we used to purchase, which now have a tariff, and that obviously has an impact on existing projects... so we're still navigating that."
Black says he's "concerned" about one specific project a year in the making for which the company purchased a piece of equipment six months ago from a Michigan-based supplier that it plans to integrate when it's shipped over later this year.
Situations like that have given Black Controls more of a push to expand international partnerships outside the United States, and it plans to make use of the Trade Accelerator program.
"We're set up and we're able to execute in other parts of the world, but in terms of actually developing business and getting sales to companies that are based there, that's where this program will help us," Black added.
"If we want to grow, given the current situation with the U.S., it is something that we need to seriously consider."
