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Business TodayKingsTon

Your source for business and chamber news in the Greater KinGston area

JanuarY 28, 2013 Vol. 2 no. 1.

By Patricia Henderson

Cissec Corporation, an information engineering, system integration and cus-tom software development provider, has a passion for making seemingly impos-sible ideas, possible. And, interestingly, it was founder Michael Rimmer’s passion for both technology and

windsurfing that first gave birth to this Ontario com-pany.

Rimmer, with talent for both marketing and tech-nology, met some physi-cians while windsurfing in Kingston during the early 90s. The resulting conver-sations about health care and technology eventually led to his involvement with

the non-profit organization QUAIL (Queen’s University Advanced Informatics Lab) that conducted problem solving and integration for a number of research proj-ects at Queen’s, Kingston General Hospital and Hotel Dieu Hospital.

By 1998, they were asked to install a wireless infra-structure into the hospitals

that would allow doctors to use hand-held devices, inte-grate systems and provide single viewing portals for each patient. Michael Rim-mer’s son, Justin, now Di-rector of Sales and Custom-er Relations, says, “At that time, we were looked upon as heretics because wire-less systems were in their infancy and not trusted. But

really we were pioneers!” He adds, “The QUAIL

projects were so success-ful that we turned it into a business that supplied tech-nology to Kingston General Hospital. We soon began to notice that the work flows in hospitals were lacking. Physicians were walking to multiple floors just to get pieces of data from various

systems. And not all infor-mation could be accessed from the same terminals. It soon became obvious that there was a gap in technol-ogy in health care.”

Cissec Corporation quickly filled that gap and more, and today this family-owned company

The Power of InnovationAn all-hands-on-deck approach to problem solving

By Andrea Gunn

After a four-year hiatus, thousands of Queen’s alumni and their families will once again return to Kingston to celebrate Homecoming this October. This influx into the city over two weekends pres-ents significant opportunities for local businesses — from advertising their services to visitors, to sponsoring an event or getting involved in joint campus-community pro-gramming.

While the tradition of Queen’s alumni returning to campus for reunions and football dates back to 1926, Homecoming 2013 will look very different from years past. For a start, it will be held on two weekends: October 4-6 and October 18-20. The dual-weekend model is designed to better accommodate the needs of the Kingston community, local businesses, returning alumni and students.

“With growing numbers of active alumni every year, it makes sense to use local resources to best effect,” says Sarah Indewey, Manager of Volunteer Relations and Re-unions at Queen’s. “Over two weekends, returning grads and their families will be better able to secure their preferred accommodation in Kingston.”

Alumni celebrating a 5, 15, 25, 35, and 45-year re-union will return on October 4-6. Those celebrating a 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 50+ year reunion will return on Octo-ber 18-20.

While registration num-bers won’t be known until later in the summer, 60 classes have already confirmed their intentions to join the Home-coming celebrations. “More than 7,000 Queen’s alumni are eligible to participate with their classes in the first week-end, and just over 8,500 in the second,” says Indewey. In addition, other reunions are being planned for Queen’s athletic teams and groups on these weekends. University organizers generally plan for between 10 and 30% of eli-gible groups to return for their reunion. Many grads bring spouses and children, with the intention of staying for the whole weekend. Each football game at Richardson Stadium is expected to attract up to 10,000 people.

Programming for Home-coming 2013 is in the devel-opment stages, and it, too, will have a new look. “We’re going to blend some famil-iar Queen’s traditions, like a home football game on each weekend, with some fresh and innovative programming

for our alumni, students and for members of the Kingston community,” says Indewey. “Returning alumni can enjoy shopping, exploring, learning and re-discovering Kingston, so we’re looking for oppor-tunities to showcase our city and all its resources. We are exploring things like student-organized career networking events open to local employ-ers, and campus educational events open to the community, as well as some fun volunteer activities that bring the whole community together.”

To keep up-to-date with Homecoming plans as they develop, visit bit.ly/home-coming2013. The full pro-gram for both weekends will be finalized in March. Ques-tions about Homecoming pro-gramming can be directed to [email protected].

To explore the business opportunities for Homecom-ing 2013, including sponsor-ship and advertising, contact Peter Gillespie at [email protected] or call him at 613-533-6000 Ext. 75464.

Queen’s Homecoming 2013 Creates Opportunities for Local Businesses

Queen’s Nursing grads pose for a class reunion photo. More than 60 classes have confirmed attendance for Home-coming 2013 so far.

continued PG. 3

2 Kingston Business Today - January 28, 2013

Welcome to our new members:M.W. Cotman & Associates Inc.

Telephone: (613) 634-2223

We provide a full range of appraisal services from residential and recreational properties, farms, commercial, industrial and institutional properties. We have con-siderable expertise and experience in the appraisal of a wide range of property types to facilitate not only mortgage financing but for the Division of Assets, Expropria-tion and Tax and Estate Planning. This includes properties in Kingston, rural properties in surrounding areas and a wide range of waterfront properties.

Mom’s Chickenwww.momschickenkingston.com

Mom’s Chicken is now serving Kings-ton for online food delivery orders. If you like quality homemade chicken, then

you’re sure to love Mom’s Chicken. From our homestyle fried and rotisserie chick-en to family meals, there’s something to please everyone. Our selection of comfort food is just a click of a button (see our website) away from your door. Delivery available.

Mortgage Brokers Kingstonwww.chantalrook.com

We act as an intermediary between you and the largest lenders in Canada to se-cure the most competitive rates with the most favorable terms. We have infinite in-dustry knowledge, world-class results and are committed to excellence. We take the time to understand your unique mortgage requirements. We offer time and cost sav-ing opportunities, specialized knowledge, objective advice and superior customer service. Whether it’s a new purchase,

debt consolidation or the refinance of an existing property, we are with you every step of the way. We are industry leaders and one of Canada’s most respected mort-gage planning specialists.

Royal Kingston Curling Clubwww.royalkingston.com

Along with six sheets of excellent curl-ing ice, our facility boasts a very well equipped banquet lounge and bar, which we rent to members and non-members.

Bulk Barn - Division Streetwww.bulkbarnfoods.com

Baking, cake decorating, candy making, birthday party and wedding supplies, vita-min supplements, cake pan rentals, gluten and wheat free products. Environmentally friendly cleaning, health, beauty aids, pet

foods, spices, specialty teas, coffee, fresh quality products.

Seeley’s Bay DrugmartTelephone: (613) 387-3939

We offer a complete selection of spe-cialty home health care products & ser-vices, tailored to meet specific needs for health recovery and maintenance. Phar-macists on staff. Free local prescription delivery.

Verona DrugmartTelephone: (613) 374-5500

Notes: We offer a complete selection of specialty home health care products & ser-vices, tailored to meet specific needs for health recovery and maintenance. Phar-macists on staff. Free local prescription delivery.

Donna WoodburyChair, Greater Kings-

ton Chamber of Com-merce for 2013 President & Co-owner of Rogers Wireless Express / WE Visual Solutions.

Donna and her business partner, Don Woodbury, opened their first Rogers wireless store in 1993 and have never looked back. To-day, Wireless Express is the largest Rogers’ dealer in Ontario and second largest in Canada, employing 250 people.

Donna describes herself as creative, competitive, and passionate about busi-ness and people. She rec-ognizes opportunities and responds swiftly and suc-cessfully. Realizing their stores required point-of-sale marketing materials, she started an in-house produc-tion company that today is considered a leader in large format print and graphic de-sign services. The company produces materials for all

Wireless Express stores as well as numerous Kingston businesses.

Donna’s accomplish-ments did not go unnoticed by the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce. She was named Business Person of the Year in 2004 and received the President’s Award in 2008 for demon-strating tremendous work and benefit to the local busi-ness community.

New Directors

Andrew BonhamCunningham, Swan, Part-

ner

Donna Glasspoole Kingston Heritage EMC |

Frontenac Gazette EMC, Gen-eral Manager

Sam Rogers Sam Rodgers Consulting,

Owner

Trevor Topping Wilkinson & Company

LLP, Chartered Accountant

Continuing Directors

Bill Hughes – President, Weehooey

Anthony Agostino – Presi-dent/Executive Producer, Viva Productions

Martin Sherris – Business Development Manager, Man-co Recycling Systems

John Ryce – Past-Presi-dent, Greater Kingston Cham-ber of Commerce,

CFP, Division Director, In-

vestors Group

Ted Baxby – Owner, Atten-tion Getters

Matthew Fair – Presi-dent & CEO, 14 Theories

John Henderson – Owner and President, Henderson To-tal Maintenance Ltd., Vice-President, Response IT

Lisa Ilan – Senior Manag-er, Loans, Business Develop-ment Bank

Diane Kimpinski – Joint Owner, Marketing Manager, Speedpro Signs

Lynne Lepage – President, Shoebox Services Inc.

Shawn Whalen – Market-

ing & Promotions Director, 98.3 Fly FM/98.9 The Drive

New Chamber Staff Employees

Karen Richardson - Com-munications Specialist

Karen will be responsible for all communications includ-ing media releases, electronic newsletters, e-flashes, script/agenda writing, web content and social media management.

Jennifer McLaren – Busi-ness Development Specialist

Jennifer will be responsible for the continuous growth of the Chambers membership through the development of relationships with current members, the public, board of directors, suppliers, sponsors, community partners, staff and volunteers

Chamber Board 2013The Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce would like to announce the following new members to our 2013 Chamber Board:

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Kingston Business Today - January 28, 2013 3

The Power of Innovation

Justin Rimmer, Director of Sales and Customer Relations, Cissec Corpo-ration.

has grown to six employees and now provides solutions to clients all over the world. Cissec was recently awarded a contract to design and develop a national Pulmonary Rehab Registry for the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation (AACVPR). This actually is the company’s third national registry, with their first being for the Canadian Asso-ciation of Cardiac Rehabilitation and their second being an ear-lier Cardiac Rehab registry for AACVPR.

Rimmer says, “There is a surge in registries now as people want to collate data and compare regions in terms of performance. This new AACVPR registry will track how patients are faring through the course of their treat-ment. Individuals and clinics will have access to the registry and can compare their averages with others nationally. This specific initiative is extremely large-scale since it covers the entire U.S.”

This organization also boasts a diversity of clients in all areas, from accounting to research to health. In fact, whenever the Kingston area hears statistics is-sued by Public Health, these are most likely generated from a system that Cissec implemented. Their specific system captures complaints, classifies them and compares averages to alert health organizations about disease out-breaks.

But health care continues to be an important niche for Cissec and they are truly the “go-to” in-formation engineering company for health-care technologies that require special development, es-pecially regarding privacy issues. Rimmer says, “We are also much more willing than the average company to immerse ourselves in the life of a physician. We send our people out to job shadow doctors for a day. This allows us to discover things in their day-to-day workflow that might otherwise go unnoticed because, besides the technical work flow, we also identify physical ones – exactly where a physician needs to go to get the information. Our direct hospital experience means we are much more sensitive to the way technology needs to be implemented in the medical sys-tem.”

Rimmer and his associates are very proud of this work. “As we know, health-care workers are oversubscribed and under-re-sourced. But with technology, we can help improve patient flow, patient outcome and reduce er-rors. We get great satisfaction in helping the cause.”

This unique company em-ploys graduates from both uni-versities and colleges. Rimmer himself has both a computer sci-ence diploma and an economics degree. “Our people love tech-nology and problem solving and have a great deal of creativity and,

yes, patience. All six of us will sit in a boardroom to brainstorm an idea so we can look at it with a marketing slant, an engineering slant and a desktop support ana-lyst slant. Everyone gets some input into the end solutions.”

Cissec stays leading edge by constantly implementing new technology, while staying away from questionable technologies that don’t get adopted. “And each implementation of software is different with each client so we are never bored. As technolo-gists, we like to play with new things and solve problems, and ultimately enjoy providing a so-lution that improves a process or an outcome.” www.cissec.com

Continued from Pg. 1

In his book Lean Innova-tion: Understanding What’s Next in Today’s Economy, Barry Cross, Lecturer in Op-erations Management and Technology at Queen’s School of Business, introduces a nov-el and simple framework for innovation. Enabled by the application of lean principles, Cross helps the organization free up the resources neces-sary to support and “fund” innovation, and drive the business towards what he calls “next”. Next is growth for the firm, a place where new customers exist and the organization spends less time competing head-to-head and worrying about price.

Cross’s style is very ap-proachable and readable, with anecdotes, examples and cases discussing challenges and successes with the com-mercialization of new ideas by companies both new and familiar to the reader. Compa-nies and organizations in the Kingston area will find it es-pecially relevant, as the target readers are leaders in small and medium-sized enterpris-es, not the multinational with a $100 Million R&D budget.

Lean Innovation: Understanding What’s

Next in Today’s Economy

The Cataraqui Town Centre store is slated to open summer 2013. The store is undergo-ing significant renovations, inside and out, to bring the true Target experience to Kingston. The renovations represent an investment of

more than $10 million and will take place over a 6-9 month period. Target expects to employ between 150-200 team members at the store and all available positions will be posted on-line at target.ca/careers.

Target is on Target for Summer 2013

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By Jeff Hewitt

It is difficult to try and com-pare service offerings from Managed Service Providers (MSPs), especially when it comes to pricing and included features. Pricing seems to be a good place to start to make comparisons but comparing on price alone can be mislead-ing. Let’s take a look.

Say you have received two Managed Services Pro-posals, and company “A” is 30% higher in monthly costs. At first glance it may appear as though they are overpriced, but this is where you have to really look at the service of-ferings and break them down. What exactly is each company providing?

First off, there are two types of MSPs, those who provide complete service, and those who provide partial service. Make sure you know the difference. Both will gen-erally include remote support services but only the complete MSP will include on-site sup-port, at no extra charge, in their regular service.

Managed Services can generally be broken down into different areas: Reactive Support, Network Adminis-tration, Backup and Disaster Recovery Management, and Technology Guidance. How do the two companies com-pare in each of these areas?

The Reactive support

group is generally the most valuable on a day to day basis as they are the ones who will keep your staff working effec-tively. You want to make sure that this group is well staffed and that their technicians are user friendly and knowledge-able. You need to know there are good problem solvers in this group. How easy is it to get a hold of someone in this group? Are they available when you call or do you have to leave messages? How fast are they to resolve the issue?

The Network Administra-tor will generally oversee the work being done by the reac-tive group and will be respon-sible for overall management of the network, including the configuration of services, maintenance schedules, sys-tem updates and reviewing of tickets.

Backup and Disaster Re-covery Management is criti-cal to any organization and you should ensure that the MSP you choose is able to provide solutions which meet your needs. Generally speak-ing, your provider should recommend or provide mul-tiple backup paths, such as imaging and offsite backups, to cover multiple disaster or recovery scenarios. (Some MSPs include backup solu-tions in their monthly fee.) One last point to consider is that the backup solution is only as good as the manage-

ment. Backup success should be confirmed daily or weekly, and scheduled test restores should also be performed to verify data integrity.

Technology Guidance can be handled either by a sepa-rate individual in the organi-zation, such as a Technology Advisor or if one is not avail-able, through a Senior Net-work Administrator. Many organizations find it difficult to make the right technology decisions, and sometimes im-plement solutions which may involve extra costs or duplica-tion of services. Technology Guidance is important and the benefits that can be gained by making the right IT invest-ments can potentially save tens of thousands of dollars.

One thing we forget about when comparing services are the people who deliver the service. What is most impor-tant about any program is the quality of the people who ac-tually do the work. Two other critical areas to review:

Number of staffSome MSPs may not have

enough skilled people to han-dle different areas, which will affect both their service de-livery and their support capa-bilities. If your MSP has only one or two people to assist your whole organization they bring no advantage. You don’t want to call for help and find out they can’t help you until

tomorrow or even next week. Make sure that your MSP has a team of knowledgeable people who are available to assist you and your staff when required.

Certified StaffYou should look for a part-

ner who has Certified IT Staff. Certification means that staff members are trained in the systems they are supporting. They will be able to resolve issues more quickly, which in turn will reduce downtime. By keeping current in new technologies they will be able to share their knowledge and help your staff as equipment is upgraded. This is impor-tant to consider as Windows 8 is rolled out and support for Windows XP ends in April 2014.

If after comparing the program deliverables and all things above appear equal, you may have to see what else is included. There are full ser-vice and partial service pro-viders in the MSP arena and sometimes it is difficult to dif-ferentiate the two.

A full service provider in-cludes value added services in the standard monthly fee, such

as antivirus and antispam soft-ware, backup solutions, email support for smartphones, and third-party vendor support.

Partial service providers will bill separately for these extra services so price com-parison at this point will not allow you to compare apples to apples. Let’s look into this further.

Partial service MSPs gen-erally have lower monthly fees which are attractive at first glance, but these don’t take any extra billing for “on-site, installation, or mainte-nance” fee’s into account. The initial service program costs appear to be much lower until you add up all the extra bills you get over the course of the year. Unfortunately, there is no way to predict what these extra costs will be. This extra billing also means that they make money every time you have a problem, therefore there is no incentive for them to reduce problems before they occur.

The greatest value to be gained from managed servic-es is through the full service MSP who offers unlimited re-mote and onsite support. If an MSP makes this offer it adds

tremendous value and can be considered a built in per-formance incentive. The full service MSP understands that both sides benefit when your network has fewer problems; both you and they are more profitable. By working ahead of time to prevent problems before they occur, both sides win. Unlimited support means the MSP is now responsible for the risk of system down-time, not you!

Managed services are a great way to receive value for your money if the program is right. You can try to cut up-front costs by going with the partial MSP and hope that ex-tra costs won’t come up. Or you can go with a full service MSP and be sure that your support will be delivered for a predictable flat monthly fee.

Compare the service of-ferings carefully and make sure the contract is right for you. Other factors to consider are the length of the contract, number of years in business, and references from similar business’ to your own.

Jeff Hewitt is a Corporate Account Executive at On-Serve.

Comparing Managed Services

Matt Dubblestein: Insurance • [email protected] the Managing Partner for All Risks Insurance Brokers Ltd. in Kingston, Matt coversall insurance needs including auto, home, commercial and life. He opened his brokeragefirm in 2011 after spending 12 years in sales and management with a major personaland casualty insurance company.

John Evans: Accounting • [email protected]’s Padgett Business Services franchise opened in 1996 to provide small businesseswith all the tools of big business. He offers monthly client visits; strategic planning versus history reporting; bonded payroll service; and a dedicated tax department.

Lindsey Foster: Communications • [email protected]’s company, WordWorx, works with clients to ensure the development of clear,concise, accurate and inspired written materials. She identifies key objectives and target audiences and develops annual reports, communications plans & reports, corporate profiles, and website content.

Dave Hallett: IT Management • [email protected] works with large and small clients around the world on cloud computing strategiesto optimize marketing, operations and internal communications. Dave's expertise is inimplementing digital marketing programs, interactive portals and social intranets.

Genevieve Landis: Marketing/Advertising • [email protected] Landis Marketing is a full-service agency offering marketing, advertising and promotional services. Projects range from corporate logos, advertising campaigns,trade/retail material, in-store signage, banners and more. Projects are quoted to suitspecific requirements, and can include photography, design, creative and printing.

Find the missing piece

Which piece of the puzzle can we help you with?

Bill Beattie Jean Bédard Connie Carrillo Debra Dobing Richard Dobing Matt Dubblestein John Evans Lindsey Foster Dave Hallett Genevieve Landis

www.PEAKteam.ca

Bill Beattie: Strategic Planning • [email protected]’s expertise is in strategic change leadership for better business results and an improved working environment. He is a proven facilitator and trainer committed tohelping individuals and organizations define and achieve their goals.

Jean Bédard: Business Law • [email protected] offers practical legal advice for businesses, professionals and not�for�profit corporations. With over 35 years experience, Jean focuses on corporate and commer-cial law, contracts and agreements, franchise law and government relations.

Connie Carrillo: Human Resources • [email protected] brings over 14 years of experience in Human Resources, providing support and counsel to management. In 2009, she established HR on Target, an independenthuman resources company offering HR planning, strategic planning, and recruitmentand selection.

Debra Dobing: Benefits/Employee Retirement • [email protected]’s expertise is in developing comprehensive employee benefit programs, includingoptions for alternative funding, provider selection, administration and communications.Her company, Strategic Benefits & Insurance Services Ltd., focuses on providing financial protection.

Richard Dobing: Benefits/Employee Retirement • [email protected] designs, analyzes and develops comprehensive and affordable Employee Benefit programs to meet the financial and business needs of owners and their employees. His programs include traditional health and dental plans, employee assistanceplans and group retirement.

2013 PEAK Professional Expert Advisors Kingston Inc.

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By Jennifer Baker

Social media is a power-ful marketing medium that has become an important force and industry standard for business. There are oodles of platforms each of which have hundreds of developers working hard to con-stantly deliver bigger and better platforms for users. Despite social media’s dominant mar-ket presence, however, many people are still questioning its purpose and intent. Part of this apprehension is due the speedy nature of this dynamic industry and the lack of education.

The biggest stum-bling block for many individuals is the new language associated with each social media platform. Many social media industry veterans forget that not everyone understands this on-line jargon. Words like hashtag, pin board, newsfeed, and ap-plication have edged their way into simple conversations, leav-ing many people confused and lacking an understanding what they mean. Social media train-ing allows individuals to de-velop a clear understanding of the context of the word through simple contextual demonstra-

tions. No, gentleman in the front row, hashtags are not something you did in the 70s.

The second stumbling block is the overwhelming nature of many social media platforms. Have you ever stopped to look

at your Facebook homepage? Let’s take a quick inventory: newsfeed, messages, events, status updates, sponsored sto-ries, ticker, finding friends, pho-tos, pages and ads. The amount of information on one single landing page can be extremely overwhelming. Social media training allows individuals to develop a personalized and ef-fective roadmap to navigate online platforms. By highlight-ing areas to focus on individu-

als will become more confident and thus more efficient and ef-fective social media users.

While understanding the language of social media and navigating platforms is essen-tial, there are many additional

benefits to providing social media training, including:

1. Save time by un-derstanding how to create and organize efficient so-cial media updates.

2. Build a solid client base by creating effective updates and actively en-gaging with customers.

3. Develop a consis-tent brand across all so-cial media platforms.

4. Increase sales through additional online marketing mediums.

Social media train-ing opportunities will be available through the

Greater Kingston Cham-ber of Commerce in 2013. For the most up-to-date events visit the Kingston Chamber’s Event Calendar.

Jennifer Baker offers social media training semi-nars, one-on-one personal-ized training, and corporate group training. Jennifer Baker Consulting is located in Kingston and is a proud member of the Greater Kingston Chamber of Com-merce.

The Importance of Social Media Training

By Dr. Jay Adamsson

Are you creating your first website or updating an exist-ing website? Then you have to make some important deci-sions. The hardest part of cre-ating a website happens before any graphics are designed, and before any programming is done. The decisions you make when starting out will resonate through your entire project, and guide the rest of your work.

Many small business own-ers see the web as a quick and easy way to success. But re-member that the web is just another tool for your business, another outlet to reach out to the world. But like any other as-pect of your business, what you get out of it depends entirely on what you put into it.

Here are four items that you should answer before you start development on your website:

1. What do you want to achieve with your website?

In other words, your web-site is not free. Creating a web-site takes an investment of cash and time. Exactly why are you investing? What do you hope to get out of your website? The better you answer this ques-tion, the better your website will be. Some websites are built to sell items, some to generate leads, some to promote events or products, and some to build brand awareness. Narrow down exactly what you want to ac-complish with your website, and then build the website to do exactly that job. To answer that question completely, you also need to know the following:

2. What is your target mar-ket, and how are they going to find you?

Generally, when I ask new clients who their target market is, the first answer is “every-one, of course”. But if you try building your website to talk to everyone, then it will talk to no one. Again, the more specific you can be with this question, the more effective your web-site will be. Who is likely to be your customer? Once you have described your customer, you need to know how they are going to find your website. Are they searching for your busi-ness because you have already built a reputation? Are they

previous customers that are re-turning? Or are they looking for your products or information and have never heard of you before? If so, what are they typ-ing into the search engines that should lead to your site? The type of customer you are target-ing plays a huge role in design-ing an effective website.

3. How much ongoing at-tention are you willing to give to your website?

Social media, such as Fa-cebook and Twitter, are all the rage in online activities these days. But the only thing worse than not participating in these areas is promising to participate and not following through. An active internet presence takes time, money, or both. How much effort do you want to continue putting into your site? Not as much as facebook and Twitter require? What about a blog? This requires some effort, but not as much as an active so-cial media campaign. Even that is too much? Then don’t build in a blog unless you intend to maintain it. Just remember that a website is like anything else in life. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Set your expectations in line with the effort you are willing to make.

4. How do you measure success?

If you have an active web-site and Internet presence, you are putting time and ef-fort into your site on a regu-lar basis, so you want your efforts to be as effective as possible. If you have a static website that never changes, at some point in the future you will want to make the in-vestment to update what you do have. If you know what is and is not working, your next website will be much better. And, it is much easier to de-sign a website with measure-ment in mind than to change the website later to accom-modate what you want to measure.

Website planning can be challenging. Once you’ve made the decision to build a website, it is tempting to jump right into creating the graphics and the look for the site. But a bit of forethought makes the rest of the process flow smoother. And more im-portantly, the resulting web-site is much more effective and has a much larger posi-tive impact on your business.

For most business owners, the planning process is kind of tedious. But it is certainly preferable to living with the regrets of having a website that does not meet your ex-pectations.

Four Tips To Creating Your Website

Dr. Jay Adamsson is the owner of Analytic-OR (www.analytic-or.com), specializing in creating effective web-sites. Questions or comments can be directed to [email protected].

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R0011857717


By Stu Woolley

If you operate a for-profit business and it’s not a retail or cash-and-carry operation, you probably bill your customers with terms of credit. You have “receivables”. You’ve provided goods or services on a promise of payment, dispatched your in-voices and now you’re waiting to get paid. And waiting…

No one ever said getting paid was easy. No one ever said you’d have to be as motivated about rounding up your receivables as you are about selling. Making sales and getting paid are the twin engines that power every com-mercial business down “profit highway”. Sales pull from the front, cash pushes from the rear. For our businesses to thrive, we have to make sales and we have to get paid. That’s the profitabil-ity fit.

But let’s be honest, past-due accounts are always challenging. They challenge the health and welfare of most SMEs (small-medium enterprises) and sole-proprietor micro-businesses, and they also make us feel personally uncomfortable. No one relishes being a bill-collector dragging customers on the payment carpet. As a result, unpaid invoices are the least attractive part of owning and operating a business. Avoid-ance is a common response. We avoid confronting customers who avoid payment.

Having past-due aggro is problem enough. Doing noth-

ing meaningful about it only makes matters worse. Much worse. Reality check: there’s no alternative to getting paid; non-payment is not an option. So why do smart, capable owners and managers balk when it comes to past-due pursuit? What keeps good businesses struggling with underperforming receivables? There’s an inventory of small, crucial answers, of course, but let me bring into focus two of the most pervasive: fear of em-barrassment and fear of “churn”.

Fear of embarrassmentIn each case, the real difficul-

ty is attitudinal. Take the “embar-rassment” issue. Faced with an invoice with a long, white beard, we wonder: “How do I make that you-owe-me call? What do I say? And how do I say it right, so things don’t spin out of control?” As one local business owner re-cently told me: “We’re too nice to have good receivables.” Non-sense! “Too nice” has nothing to do with it. Just consider the op-posite. A hectoring past-due rant is just self-indulgence deluxe. Bring a battle attitude to the pay-ment table, and battle is what you get in return — not the payment cooperation you want and need. Personal warfare is not a smart receivables strategy. Hostility never advances the payment pro-cess — it just adds a new layer of personal gunk to the existing dollar mess. We can be decent and disciplined and still get paid, most of the time.

Happily, the majority of us don’t bring our inner samurai to the workplace. We’re not confrontational by nature, and we find arguments about money distasteful and intimidating. Un-fortunately, when we rehearse our past-due scripts in our heads, we often conjure negative im-ages of how it can all go horribly, disastrously wrong. We imagine embarrassing our clients and embarrassing ourselves; we fan-tasize combat and hard feelings. And because these imaginary

run-throughs are so off-putting, we only discourage ourselves from taking the past-due bull by the horns. We do nothing, and our receivables continue to age, leaving our businesses chroni-cally cash-poor. How does that make sense? It doesn’t.

Fear of “churn”“Churn” is, of course, a pe-

rennial business anxiety; los-ing customers is always a dark prospect. Micro-businesses and SMEs are sales-driven by na-

ture; client-list sensitivity is en-demic. So anything that seems to jeopardize sales relationships feels like a dagger pointed at the heart of company sustainability. This leaves suppliers reluctant to tackle problem customers, even those who are obvious cash li-abilities. And that, friends, is a big unearned win for habitual slow-payers and troublesome no-payers.

As in life generally, our commercial fears are not totally unrealistic. But they’re usually overblown, which makes them counterproductive. They lack survival value. As chief stew-ards of our businesses, we don’t have the luxury of subordinating business interests to a personal comfort zone. We have an over-riding responsibility to ensure that the companies in our care get fed the only “food” that can nourish them: cash. Every time we choose to back away from a pastdue snailmail, email, fax or phone call, we’re only damag-ing the companies we’re sup-posed to be navigating into the ports of profit.

“Salesthink” that treats cash as an afterthought or, worse, an adversary is steering for the rocks. Think about it. What kind of customer is so averse to be-ing reminded about a pastdue billing that he or she will jump ship because we say we want to be paid? A bad customer — and only a bad customer. And when a bad customer goes for a long midnight swim off the up-

per deck, what’s the appropriate response? Let the bells ring and the banners fly! One less unsa-voury, non-compliant headache to deal with! Hooray for us!

How many junk clients haunt the average commer-cial client list? Very few. Most garden-variety delinquents are worthy customers warehousing supplier cash in their own bank accounts. Why? Typically, it’s because their own A/R outlook is anything but rosy. When our customers mismanage their re-ceivables and cash flow, their payables lengthen toward an infinite horizon. At best, they’ll choose to pay some suppliers and not others, and the “others” list is always the longer one, by far. Do these customers want to remain on our customer lists? Do they want to continue to benefit from our goods and ser-vices? Yes, they do! And they’re keenly aware that their payment profiles are making unpaid sup-pliers unhappy. They know what cooks.

As unpaid suppliers, we don’t have to be shy. It’s our money we’re after, so why should we be? But we do have to be proactive and business-like in all pastdue communications, be it print or verbal. We must be clear, concise, firm, friendly and, above all, dispassionate. Remember, savvy pastdue pur-suit does not break relationships; bad business manners does. And when everyone pays, everyone gets paid.

Rising To The Challenge of Getting Paid

Stu Woolley has been a receivables manager and consultant for more than 20 years. His company, Ef-fective Receivables, provides part-time A/R services and expert cash-recovery coaching to small and me-dium-sized Ontario businesses.

finance Managing your Money


R0011754198

By: Karen Sands, Chartered Accountant, Collins Barrow

The use of trusts in a will (testamentary trusts) can be a very effective tax planning tool. Such trusts can provide for in-come splitting even after death.

During their lifetimes, many taxpayers split certain types of income – particularly investment income – between themselves and their spouses/partners (hereinafter referred to simply as “spouses”). But this structure has a problem: if one spouse dies leaving all assets to the surviving spouse, that sur-viving spouse must report all the income that was previously split between the two of them.

In Canada, the income tax system is such that, as income increases, tax rates increase. In a simple example, two spouses whose only income is $40,000 each in interest income will pay combined income tax in On-tario in 2012 of approximately $12,825 per year. If one passes away and leaves the other to re-port $80,000, the income tax bill increases to $19,237 per year.

The good news is that, with some relatively simple steps and good professional advice, this increased income tax bill can be reduced significantly. Such planning involves setting up a testamentary trust.

The trust concept can be dif-ficult to understand: a trust is not like a company, nor is it a live person, nor a partnership. Essen-tially, a trust involves a person who settles, or creates, the trust (the settlor), with other people who manage the trust property (the trustees) for the benefit of those for whom the trust was created (the beneficiaries). The settlor’s instructions control how the trustees manage the trust property. In a testamentary trust, the settlor’s instructions are set out in his or her will. The beneficiaries are those to whom the assets pass. In the above example, the beneficiary is the spouse of the deceased.

The trustee is often the most difficult person to appoint from a practical perspective. In many cases, the trustee is the same per-son as is named executor under the will, but professional advice

is required to ensure compliance with the income tax rules.

In most cases when married people make their wills, they leave their assets to their spous-es. Canadian tax rules generally provide that income tax is not triggered on assets left to a surviving spouse. Properly set-ting up a trust for the spouse does not change this. It simply means that, rather than passing outright, the assets instead are left in trust for the surviving spouse. In this manner, the in-come earned on those assets is taxed in the trust rather than in the spouse’s hands.

A properly constituted tes-tamentary trust is taxed at the same marginal income tax rates that apply to individu-als. A trust may not, however, claim the personal tax credits available to individuals, so the combined tax paid by the trust and the surviving spouse is not exactly the same as it would be when such income is split between two individuals. But it is close.

Using the example above

of $40,000 of interest income annually, the trust would pay $8,060 of income tax and the surviving spouse would pay $6,412, for a total tax tax bill of $14,472 — an annual sav-ings of $4,765.

There are several techni-cal details that require careful attention when such a trust is set up, and one must be care-ful that assets are not owned jointly prior to death. Other advantages of such planning include the ability of the trust settlor to direct what is to hap-pen with assets when the sur-viving spouse dies. This often is attractive to those who wish to ensure that certain benefi-ciaries eventually receive their assets, while also ensuring that a spouse is taken care of dur-ing the spouse’s lifetime.

With proper professional advice, this planning is rela-tively simple and inexpensive to implement, and can result in substantial tax savings. Similar savings can be achieved by set-ting up testamentary trusts for other beneficiaries as well.

Spousal Trusts as a Tax Planning Tool

Karen Sands is a Chartered Accountant who special-izes in providing income tax planning advice to indi-viduals and corporations. Karen tutors practitioners from across the country at the CICA Income Tax Prac-tice Course.

By Lorne Matthews-Glasspoole

The first sixty days of the new calendar year is always an exciting time for Kingston’s small business owners. Having reflected on last year’s successes and challenges, now’s the time to plot out and implement the strategies required to make this year your most successful yet. This is also the time of year for looking even further forward, to a time when operating your business will no longer be a concern. As a business owner, your RRSP invest-ments will likely represent a significant source of your self-funded retirement in-come. You can make your RRSP planning even more effective by understanding and taking full advantage of RRSP “carry-forward” potential.

You are already aware that RRSP contribution room may be carried for-ward if not used in the cur-rent tax year. Did you also know the same applies to the deductions created by contributions made, which may be similarly carried for-ward if not claimed on the current year’s tax return? Add a few simple strate-gies, and you can make use of that carry-forward room in ways that will pay off for you now and later:

Make a contribution now, take only part of the deduction now. Consider using only a portion of your contribution made for this tax year, in order to only reduce your taxable income down to the next marginal tax bracket. Then, carry the remainder of the deduction forward to next year in or-

der to once again reduce your income from its high-est marginal tax bracket. This makes for great over-all tax efficiency.

Make a contribution now, take the entire deduction later. Yes, you can do this! Make your maximum con-tribution to RRSP eligible investments in the current tax year but save the whole deduction for a later year. If, for example, you know you’ll be in a higher mar-ginal tax bracket in future years, consider saving the entire deduction til then. Think in terms of “getting a bigger future bang” for your deduction bucks.

Take an RRSP loan to fill accumulated contribu-tion carry-forward room. This “borrowing to in-vest” strategy works best when lending rates are low, and you repay the loan as quickly as possible - pref-erably in one year, or two at the most. Consider using your tax refund to repay at least part of the loan.

Know your age-related options. If you’re turning 71 this year and don’t have a spouse who is younger than 71, this is your last opportu-nity to make a contribution to your own RRSP eligible investments. What’s impor-tant to remember is any un-deducted contributions can be carried-forward until the year of death. If you’re 72, have carry-forward room and a spouse 71 or younger, you can still make a contri-bution to a spousal RRSP, with your spouse as the an-nuitant.

And a few additional RRSP options for business employees:

Shelter the non-eligible portion of a severance/re-tiring allowance. You can do this by using some or all of the severance to fill the unused RRSP contribution room you’ve been carrying forward. Once again, you can use some, none, or all of the deduction in the cur-rent tax year.

Shelter a commuted pen-sion paid out in cash. If you

commute your pension and have received an excess – and taxable – amount in cash, you can use your RRSP carry-forward room to shelter at least a portion of the excess.

Decrease withholding tax. When an employer makes direct contributions to an employee’s RRSP eli-gible investments, the em-ployer need not apply with-holding tax if the employee provides evidence that they have sufficient contribution room. The employee’s most recent Notice of Assessment from the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) is consid-ered sufficient evidence of contribution room.

Ultimately, when mak-ing RRSP contribution / deduction decisions, there is no one size fits all. As a business owner, your retire-ment income planning re-quires extra care and atten-tion, especially if you will be mostly “self-funding” in your retirement. What’s im-portant now is making the most of your RRSP eligible investments and “paying yourself forward” in the most advantageous way. Consider initiating a fresh discussion on this topic when you next meet with your professional advisor.

Lorne Matthews-Glasspoole, Consultant with Investors Group Fi-nancial Services.

This column, written and published by Investors Group Financial Services Inc. and Investors Group Securities Inc. presents general information only and is not a solicitation to buy or sell any investments. Contact your own advisor for specific advice about your circumstances.

Understanding the RRSP Carry-Forward

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R0011754267


By Bob Tchegus

Everyone who owns one of the nearly 5 million par-cels of land in Ontario has recently received a document in the mail from the Mu-nicipal Property Assessment Corporation (“MPAC”). The document(s) pertain to the parcel(s) of land owned and is entitled “Property Assessment Notice” (“PAN”). Typically, most people stop reading and discard the PAN as soon as they come across the words:

“This Property Assess-ment Notice is not a property tax bill.”

Unfortunately, they do not get to the next piece of advice being:

“The assessed value of your property is used as the basis for calculating your property taxes. MPAC’s role is to accurately value and classify properties in Ontario. Your municipality/local tax-ing authority is responsible for setting property tax rates. ...Please keep a copy of this retain this Notice for your re-cords.” (My emphasis)

The PAN contains all the information of the particular parcel of land that is required pursuant to the Assessment Act (“Act”) in relation to the assessment roll. The informa-tion on the PAN forms the ba-sis of the real property taxes that will be paid in respect of the particular parcel of land for the next four years. If you

remember anything from this editorial, “Don’t discard the PAN!”

The Ontario Fair Assess-ment System was implement-ed in this province effective January 1, 1997. For the first time all properties across On-tario were assessed according to updated “current values” using the same base year. Very substantial and significant amendments were made to the Act and to the Municipal Act. Seven standard property classes were created and the business occupancy tax was eliminated.

MPAC was created effec-tive December 31, 1998 and for a short time was named the Ontario Property Assess-ment Corporation. Amend-ments to its enabling statute in 2001 changed the composi-tion of its Board of Directors and renamed the corporation. MPAC is the “assessment cor-poration” referred to through-out the Act. MPAC’s website describes itself as:

… an independent body…a non-share capital, not-for-profit corporation whose main responsibility is to provide its customers – property owners, tenants, and various levels of government (including all Ontario municipalities) with consistent and accurate prop-erty assessments. MPAC is accountable to the pub-lic through a fifteen- member Board of Directors. Eight members of the Board

are municipal representa-tives; five members represent provincial taxpayers; and two members represent provincial interests. All members of the Board are appointed by the Minister of Finance.

MPAC is responsible for administering a uniform, province-wide property as-sessment system based on current value assessment in accordance with the provi-sions of the Act. One of its main responsibilities includes the preparation of annual as-sessment rolls used by munic-ipalities to calculate property taxes.

Section 14 of the Act pro-vides that MPAC shall prepare an assessment roll for each municipality/local taxing au-thority containing the follow-ing information:1. The name and surnames,

in full, if they can be ascer-tained, of all persons who are liable to assessment in the municipality or in the non-municipal territory, as the case may be.

2. The amount assessable against each person who is liable to assessment, oppo-site the person’s name.

3. A description of each prop-erty sufficient to identify it.

4. The number of acres, or other measures showing the extent of the land.

5. The current value of the land.

6. The value of the land liable

to taxation.7. The value of land exempt

from taxation.8. The classification of the

land.A landowner will not re-

ceive a PAN unless there has been a change in the in-formation from the previous tax year. If there is a change in any information described above in respect of any par-cel of land, MPAC delivers a notice to every person who is affected by the change.

Subsection 19(1) of the Act states, “the assessment of land shall be based on its current value.” Section 1 provides the definition for “current value”, which “means, in relation to land, the amount of money the fee simple, if unencumbered, would realize if sold at arm’s length by a willing seller to a willing buyer”. Section 19.2 of the Act provides the day as of which land is valued is January 1, 2005 for the 2006, 2007 and 2008 taxation years, January 1, 2008 for the period consisting of the four taxation years from 2009 to 2012, and January 1 of the year preced-ing the first of each subsequent period consisting of four con-secutive taxation years.

2013 is the first year of the next subsequent four consecu-tive year period. The valua-tion day for the taxation years 2013 through 2016 is Janu-ary 1, 2012. Assuming that this general reassessment has caused a change in the current

values of most if not all of Ontario’s 5 million properties, everyone is receiving a PAN.

The “best” evidence of cur-rent value is a sale of the par-cel of land in the open market on the valuation day. A test often posed by MPAC is:

“To test your assessed val-ue, ask yourself if you could have sold your property on January 1, 2012 for its as-sessed value. If your answer is ‘yes’, your assessed value is accurate.”

After determining its bud-getary needs, the municipality determines a mill rate or tax rate for each property class and multiples the mill rate by the current value. The mill rate will include both munici-pal and education taxes, the latter being imposed by the province. Mill rate is defined as the tax per dollar of as-sessed value of property. The rate is expressed in “mills”, where one mill is one-tenth of a cent ($0.001). Obviously the higher the current value, the higher the real property taxes paid.

Section 7 of the Act states that the Minister of Finance shall prescribe classes of real property, which shall include but are not limited to:1. The residential property

class.2. The multi-residential prop-

erty class.3. The commercial property

class.4. The industrial property

class.5. The pipe line property

class.6. The farm property class.7. The managed forests prop-

erty class.The importance of prop-

erty class is that it deter-mines the respective mill rate that is to be applied to the current value. The best way to explain is by way of example. If one takes a property assessed at $100,000.00, based upon the City of Kingston central district area mill rates for 2012, the respective taxes paid for that property are, depending on its class:- for farmland/managed forest $366.17- for residential $1,479.46- for multi-residential $3,230.04- for commercial $3,952.48- for industrial $4,860.87.

If the current value of a property has increased since the last general assessment, the increase will be phased in over the four year period. Therefore, “Don’t discard the PAN!” as it forms the basis of your property as-sessment for the next four years.

Bob Tchegus is a Partner at the Kingston law firm of Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little & Bonham LLP.

Property Assessment Notices

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A Federal Agenda for On-tario makes the case that fed-eral policies are a barrier to Ontario’s economic growth, and calls on the federal gov-ernment to play a more pro-ductive role in improving Ontario’s economic competi-tiveness.

It makes 14 recommenda-tions on how to reform policies relating to immigration, train-ing, Employment Insurance, manufacturing, infrastructure, Aboriginal education, local economic development, and the way that the federal gov-ernment distributes wealth across the country.

The report made big waves in the news:

It received favourable na-tional coverage in the Globe and Mail and the syndicat-ed Canadian Press.

A call-in with OCC’s Josh Hjartarson was featured on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today.

Allan O’Dette was inter-viewed for a news feature that was broadcasted on Radio Canada.

An op-ed by Allan O’Dette is published in the National Post’s Full Comment section. See below:

Ottawa owes Ontario a fair deal of skilled workers

Most people shrugged when the it was recently re-ported that the federal gov-ernment is working on a new formula to distribute skilled immigrants among provinces. While we do not know the full impact it will have on Ontar-io, we do know that when the federal government generates a formula, Ontario tends to get the short end of the stick.

Ontarians should be wary. Consider these examples.

Training: Despite having 40% of Canada’s unemployed, Ontario gets only 28% of the largest pot of federal train-ing money which is intended to help workers acquire new skills.

Economic development: On a per person basis, Ontario gets roughly half the amount of federal economic develop-ment funds received by Que-bec.

Employment Insurance: In 2011-12, Ontario workers and businesses paid $1.2-bil-lion more into the Employ-ment Insurance program than they received back in benefits, despite unemployment rates above the national average. Over the last 10 years, Ontar-ians have contributed $20-bil-lion more to the EI program than they have received.

Immigration: Ontario and its employers are allocated only 5% of the skilled workers under the Provincial Nominee Program even though Ontario has massive skills shortages.

The list goes on.Why is this important?

Why should we care? Because now more than ever, Ontario needs the ability to create jobs and wealth.

Ontario’s finances are fal-tering under the weight of its accumulated deficits. The provincial debt is approach-ing $300-billion — over $22,000 for each man, woman and child. Meanwhile, nearly 600,000 Ontarians are out of work and businesses are fac-ing increasingly stiff interna-tional competition for invest-

ment, markets and talent.Despite these obstacles,

opportunities do exist — but only if the conditions are right.

Federal policy plays a big part in creating the condi-tions that enable businesses to compete and generate wealth. Think of what Ontarians could do with a better deal.

If Ontario received an ap-propriate share of federal training dollars, the provincial government could double its Second Career program and train thousands of more work-ers to obtain the skills employ-ers need. With an appropriate share of federal infrastructure money, it could make needed investments in the province’s roads, like extending High-way 427 and building a new Highway 7 between Guelph and Kitchener. And if EI was designed as a truly national labour market program, it would reduce the interregion-al subsidy away from Ontario and help businesses generate more wealth.

When our governments work together, all Canadians benefit. The provincial and federal governments have already shown an ability to cooperate. They partnered to protect hundreds of thousands of jobs in Ontario’s auto sec-tor. They worked to harmonize our tax system to help Ontario businesses create jobs. They are long-standing allies in the effort to create a single nation-al securities regulator.

We are calling on federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to remove these obstacles, or at least, release detailed and principled rationale for a con-tinuation of the status quo.

We do not claim that fix-ing these federal programs will eliminate all (or even most) barriers to Ontario’s economic transformation. There is much to be done at the provincial level, obviously. However, we are calling for a principled in-tergovernmental dialogue on some core policy frameworks.

Fundamentally, fixing these problems is not about pit-ting regions and governments against one another. It’s about creating the right conditions to grow the Ontarian and Cana-dian economy.

Allan O’Dette is president & CEO of the Ontario Cham-ber of Commerce.

For additional Ontario Chamber of Commerce advo-cacy and activities, please visit their website: www.occ.on.ca

News From the Ontario Chamber of

CommerceNews From the

Canadian Chamber of Commerce

By the Honourable Perrin Beatty President and Chief Executive Officer

In 2012, with your in-put, we launched our Top 10 Barriers to Competitive-ness. The aim of this initia-tive was to bring greater focus to our advocacy work, direct attention to the key impediments holding back Canada’s progress and urge the government to act more swiftly in increasing our country’s ability to compete internationally.

Throughout the past 12 months, along with our net-work, we conducted several initiatives and undertook specific activities to start addressing the barrier that you identified as being the greatest impediment to the success of Canadian busi-ness: the growing skills cri-sis. Thanks to our common efforts, the issue of skills is now on everyone’s mind, with the Prime Minister say-ing just a few weeks ago that overcoming this crisis is now the government’s big-gest challenge.

Such a statement demon-strates that our Top 10 initia-tive has had a much greater impact than just the specific public policy changes that we advocated for. As I men-tioned at our AGM this past September, we will continue to build on the successes achieved this year and make this an annual initiative, one that defines our brand as an organization focused on competitiveness. The list will evolve each year as we make progress on given is-sues, or we focus on certain subjects. Our ongoing con-sultations with the member-ship at large coupled with our resolution process will enable us to reflect the pri-orities of our diverse mem-bership as they impact on national competitiveness.

In this regard, I am pleased to provide our Top 10 list for 2013 as presented

to our board of directors ear-lier this month. http://www.chamber.ca/images/up-loads/Top10/2013/List_of_Top_10_Barriers_2013.pdf

This list reflects the con-sultations initiated at our AGM and held throughout the fall. I sincerely thank all members of the net-work who endorsed the Top 10 and helped us make it a strong basis for improving Canada’s competitiveness and for specifically address-ing the pressing skills short-age faced by all sectors of the economy and all regions of the country. As you will see, the skills issue remains our main priority in the year ahead. Our consultations have enabled us to identify four key areas to address in 2013: the need to upgrade the skills of the existing la-bour force; the need to re-form Canada’s immigration policy; the need to foster strong educator-employer connections; and the need to improve Aboriginal educa-tion and workforce develop-ment. I look forward to our continued partnership as we tackle these critical issues next year.

We will be launching

the 2013 Top 10 Barriers to Competitiveness on Febru-ary 12 when I will be the guest speaker at the Eco-nomic Club in Ottawa.

I urge all chambers to consider supporting this net-work-wide initiative, both on February 12 and in the weeks thereafter, through lo-cal events of your own. You may choose to issue a press release or an opinion edito-rial to your local media, hold a member event or write to your local Member of Parlia-ment. The important thing is to continue the dialogue to help increase the awareness and influence of the Top 10 Barriers to Competitiveness. We will be developing a se-ries of products that will be distributed in January to en-able you to actively partici-pate in this important endea-vour.

I thank you for your sup-port and engagement in 2012, and look forward to working with you in the year ahead to overcome the barriers to Canada’s competitiveness.

For additional Canadian Chamber of Commerce ad-vocacy and activities, please visit their website: www.chamber.ca

newsR0011797901


By Jim Barber

Genevieve Zizzo knows all about the structure of the human body, how its intricate network of bones, muscles, and organs are supposed to function, and how to help fix it when it isn’t working as it should.

As a registered massage therapist studying for her qualifications as an osteopath, Zizzo has worked hard to be-come an expert in her chosen field.

But when she moved to Kingston and decided to open her own clinic, as smart and talented as she was, Zizzo knew that she was not an ex-pert on the intricate ways of business.

So in the process of launching Full Circle Health Network on Brock Street in the summer of 2010, Zizzo approached the Kingston Eco-nomic Development Corpora-tion (KEDCO) Entrepreneur Centre for advice and practi-cal support.

Now, thanks to support she received, Zizzo is well on her way to mastering the art of business, as well as she has mastered the art of healing.

“I had opened the business for a few weeks, and then I came across KEDCO, and I

just contacted them and asked them for more information. They came back and gave me information about the services that they offer and the support that they provide for entrepre-neurs. I found it all to be very helpful,” says Zizzo, a native of Ancaster, Ontario.

“The most significant help I received was through the Ca-nadian Youth Business Foun-dation program run through the Entrepreneur Centre at KEDCO. That was wonderful. Staff helped guide me through the application process and what I needed to do. And they also paired me with a business mentor, a handpicked mentor that I have a wonderful rela-tionship with to this day. I still talk to her on a regular basis even though the program is done,” says Zizzo, adding that she was also encouraged to partake in some seminars to learn more about the actual nuts and bolts of running a small business.

“I went to a lot of those, es-pecially stuff about taxes and websites and those sorts of topics. And I found that to be helpful, especially for some-one just starting out, who has no business training. That was great, because I don’t keep my own books. I realize it’s not for me. There are great things

that you can learn on your own, but KEDCO and the En-trepreneur Centre was a great step in the right direction in terms of avoiding pitfalls.

“Having a mentor was great, because she was just a third party who didn’t have a vested interest. The only interest was in my business succeeding. A mentor like that can give you a reality check. They can make sure you’re on the ball, and do the decisions you take make proper busi-ness sense? To have someone like that who has experience and who has knowledge of how business works, I think it was a really awesome experi-ence to have that support.”

Zizzo has a B.Sc. from the University of Waterloo and a massage therapy diploma from the Canadian College of Massage and Hydrotherapy. She has additional post-grad-uate training in pre- and post-natal care, and is pursuing her Masters in Osteopathic Man-ual Science at the Canadian Academy of Osteopath and Holistic Health Science.

Osteopathy has been around for nearly 200 years, and focuses on the overall structure of a person’s body as its guiding philosophy.

“We look at the alignment of the body and how all the

parts go together. It’s all based on anatomy and physiology. It’s like being a mechanic for the body. You look at how all the parts of the ‘machine’ are put together, and how they’re affecting the function of the body, and you adjust them manually to restore health,” Zizzo explains.

Zizzo utilizes this philoso-phy in her massage therapy work, which differs from what many people know as tradi-tional massage therapy.

“Any of the message ther-apists can do any of the tech-niques that I provide, but it’s the mindset of the techniques that I provide that makes it different. My treatments are 1/2–hour long, or a little lon-ger or less depending on the person. And the clients are fully clothed, so you don’t un-dress and you don’t have any oil or anything like that.”

One of her massage thera-py instructors advised her to go into business for herself, and she took that to heart, opening Full Circle Health Network the summer after her graduation.

“I was inspired by that in-structor. He encouraged me to work for myself and talked about the benefits of self-employment. And I thought he was right. Why would I

want to work for someone else, when a little bit of leg-work now could yield a lot of results in the future?”

For more information on Zizzo and the Full Circle Health Network, visit www.fchn.ca.

For more information on business development programs offered through KEDCO, including the En-trepreneur Centre for small business and start-up support, visit www.kingstonentrepre-neurs.ca.

Profile of a Kingston Entrepreneur: Full Circle Health Network

Genevieve Zizzo

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By Jim Barber

A desire to want to help couples navigate through the legal ups and downs of life spurred Jeff Mann into developing a career as a mediator.

An American by birth, Mann had practised his pro-fession in Maine for a num-ber of years before he and his wife decided to move to Kingston to start a new life. That meant restarting his career as a mediator north of the Canada/USA border, and it meant getting help to get the business going.

Mann Mediation opened for business a little less than a year ago.

The role of a mediator, especially in family law, is becoming more important and more in demand, and folks like Mann are needed in greater numbers.

“What I do is mostly family matter mediation. This has to do with ev-erything from divorce to separation, to pre-nuptial agreements to modification of custody orders,” claims Mann.

“Mediation can save parties a lot of time and money. They can go to the mediator and work out all of the issues, or at least most of them, and I help them negotiate their way through that. Once there is an agreement, I draft a memorandum of under-standing that parties take back to their lawyers.”

Mediators involved in family law, such as Mann, are not referees, or coun-sellors. They are simply a tool that allows couples, with or without children, to quickly, efficiently and inexpensively move along the road to settling issues.

A mediation business is unique in that there are rarely “repeat customers”. But it is a business none-

theless, and coming to a new city, a new country, and not having training in managing a business led Mann to reach out to the Kingston Economic Devel-opment Corporation (KED-CO) Entrepreneur Centre for practical support and information.

“I started off just asking them for help in getting the word out about my busi-ness. So I met with them, and we went over the op-tions of how we can get the word out, and the various paths I could take to reach out to the community. Deal-ing with the Entrepreneur Centre was a big help be-cause mediation is not typi-cal. I don’t tend to main-tain clients, because when they’re done their business with me, I don’t see them again. So the staff gave me a variety of options,” Mann says, adding that the Entre-preneur Centre also helped him understand that it was important to reach out to

get assistance in marketing and accounting, if he felt those were areas where he needed expertise.

“One of the ideas that came out of my discus-sions was the idea for me to hold information sessions over the next 18 months or so. At those free sessions, I will discuss everything about divorce and separa-tion, with the focus on how mediation can help. KED-CO and the Entrepreneur Centre have been so help-ful. Any time you have any questions, they get back to you very quickly. They’ve been a real help to my busi-ness.”

For more information on Mann Mediation, visit www.mannmediate.ca.

For more information on business development programs offered through KEDCO, including the En-trepreneur Centre for small business and start-up sup-port, visit www.kingstonen-trepreneurs.ca.

Profile of a Kingston Entrepreneur:

Mann Mediation

Jeff Mann of Mann Mediation.The Chamber hosted a “Global Talent-Local Business Mixer” last November at the Renaissance, sponsored by All-Risks Insurance. It was a great opportunity for employers to mix with internationally-trained workers and immigrants looking to integrate into the local workforce. Attendees heard from guest speakers who ad-dressed topics such as immigration, employment opportunities and the employ-ers who are seeking to fill vacancies with skilled people.

Global Talent-Local Business Mixer

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For more information, please call (613) 546-0000 or email [email protected] with the subject “SaveOnEnergy”.

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In 2012, Skyline Real Estate Holdings in Kingston made advances in energy savings, environmental ben-efits and improved customer service when they replaced the in-suite lighting at five of their apartment buildings. The upgrades to energy ef-ficient compact fluorescent fixtures took place at the Sky-line properties on Compton and Briceland streets.

By replacing over 2,000 incan-descent fixtures with energy-effi-cient pin-socket GU-24 fixtures, the company will save electricity equivalent to taking 26 av-erage Kingston homes com-pletely off the grid.

The environmental and financial benefits are not the only positives resulting from the upgrades. “There has been a very positive re-action from our tenants to all of the lights at both com-plexes,” says Donna Van Lu-ven, Property Manager for Skyline in Kingston. “The old ones were very dated; a lot of them were original to the complex. It’s not just the fact that they are nice, fresh, new-looking fixtures but the lighting itself is a lot nicer, so

it’s brighter and easier for our tenants to see.”

By replacing all of the fixtures at once, Skyline was able to bring down the per-unit costs and maximize their return on investment. Be-cause only pin-socket com-pact fluorescent lightbulbs can be used in the fixtures, the yearly savings are guar-

anteed and Skyline has only to stock one kind of bulb that will work in any fixture.

Kingston Hydro was pleased to assist with the capital costs of the upgrade by providing $25 for each fixture replaced. The fund-ing comes from the province-wide saveONenergy program and other property owners in Kingston are encouraged to contact Kingston Hydro for more information.

Lighting upgrades are not the only changes that this environmentally-conscious company have implemented in the last year. The residents

at Compton Street also have access to a new community garden. “We started that last summer,” says Van Luven. “We have about 15 rows of vegetables and there is corn along the fence line. It will expand this year so more people can sign up for a row. We will also bring a com-munity garden to Briceland

Street in the summer of 2013.”

More lighting upgrades are in the works at other Sky-line properties in Kingston, includ-ing at their Village Street and John Counter Boulevard buildings. In all, an-

other 4,200 fixtures are slated to be replaced, making it the single largest project of its kind in the region. The pro-posed reduction in energy use will take the equivalent of another 52 local homes off the grid.

To find out more about how Kingston Hydro can help you conserve electricity and save money with the help of the saveONenergy Retrofit program, contact Jared Mac-Kay, Conservation Advisor with Kingston Hydro at 613-546-1181, extension 2509 or email [email protected]

Skyline Real Estate Holdings taking steps

towards a greener future

Inspiration 2 Women is the largest ever event held in Kingston designed to celebrate women in busi-ness, entrepreneurship and corporate leadership. On Thursday, April 25, 2013, the K-Rock Cen-tre is the “place to be” to hear Sarah Richardson, Catriona Le May Doan, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, and Su-san Sly. These successful Canadian women will be introduced throughout the day by emcee/comedian Deborah Kimmett.

All keynote speakers have one thing in com-mon — a genuine desire to inspire and help other women from all business sectors be successful.

“It’s unprecedented for an event like this to take

place in Kingston,” says Donna Woodbury, Chair of the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce. “I’m very excited to be able to welcome these women of influence and bring their message of leadership.” The Chamber is hosting the event.

Inspiration2Women brings together an impres-sive group of dynamic, leading Canadian women. Sarah Richardson is a de-signer and host of “Sarah 101 on HGTV”. Richard-son will share her person-al and professional story on what inspired her to design, create and share her beautiful designs with millions through her television programs. She will also provide tips and

tricks helping you with your own design chal-lenges!

Catriona Le May Doan is a speed skater, world record holder and Olympic commen-tator. Gail Vaz-Oxlade is famous as a Cana-dian money-manage-ment wizard and host of TV’s “Till Debt Do Us Part”. Author Susan Sly is a Bal-anced Living Expert, speaker and entre-preneur. And Debra Kimmett is one funny lady who be-lieves that business and creativity do mix. Be motivated by these leading women, and don’t miss the exciting event!

WHAT: Inspiration-2Woman - Kingston

WHO: Sarah Richardson, Catriona Le May Doan, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, Susan

Sly, introduced by Emcee/comedian Deborah Kim-mett WHEN:Thursday, April 25, 2013, 8 am – 5

pm WHERE: K-Rock Cen-tre, 1, The Tragically Hip Way.

More infor-mation can be found at www.inspiration-2women.ca

Twitter: @I2W2013

Facebook: www.facebook.com/12W2013

Ticket info is available at: [email protected]

Leading, Canadian Women to Speak at “Inspiration to Women” Event

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By: Nancy Uchimaru

In the last issue of Kings-ton Business Today, the Cana-dian Chamber of Commerce sounded the skills shortage alarm. In fact they called it a “crisis”, and it was num-ber one in a list of the top 10 barriers to Canada’s competi-tiveness. Here in Kingston, a small city with relatively sta-ble employment, we may not yet be feeling the pain in the way that they are in Alberta or Saskatchewan.

Nevertheless some local businesses are already strug-gling to find individuals with the right skills to help their or-ganizations thrive. More will join them as baby boomers retire and potential employ-ees, whether immigrants or new grads, choose to settle in other cities. Here’s the good news: There are solutions available, and making better use of the human resources that are already in Kingston is one of them.

Limestone Community Education, a division of Limestone District School Board, is one organization providing access to an un-derutilized source of local talent. Its Workplace English as a Second Language pro-gram not only attracts highly motivated, well-educated im-

migrants, it teaches them ad-vanced English skills geared for employment, and also offers them a 110-hour, un-paid co-op placement with a Kingston area employer. Participating organizations are taking advantage of this opportunity to get to know an internationally trained indi-vidual who can add value to their organization and some are hiring based on that posi-tive experience.

Here’s what Richard Ward, President of Pure In-genuity Inc., had to say about his experience with a Work-place ESL student:

“Amar approached me with a proposal to work in our engineering department as an unpaid intern. He had been studying ESL at Limestone Community Education and the teacher offered to place him as a co-op student. I must admit I was a little reluctant at first to take Amar on. It has now been three months and Amar has amazed me with his passion for learning and desire to achieve results. So much so, that I have decided to hire him full-time.”

Richard is not the only local employer who is reap-ing the benefits of bringing a skilled immigrant into their organization. Others are find-ing the language skills and

cultural knowledge of im-migrant employees vital to developing new markets for their products and services. Kingston may be a small city, but it has an international reach and many innovative, dynamic organizations that rely on a highly educated workforce in order to flour-ish.

Immigrants are also ap-preciative of the opportunities offered to them and reward the employer with hard work and loyalty. Reaching out to skilled immigrants in our community and encouraging immigrants to consider Kings-ton as a destination just makes good business sense, and we should demonstrate our will-ingness to take the steps need-ed to help them become part of the local workforce.

Limestone Community Education is committed to partnering with local em-ployers to develop a win-win strategy for integrating new-comers into the workforce. Limestone strives to under-stand employer needs and refer candidates who would be a good fit. It also provides recognition to employer part-ners. This year it set up a website, canplace.ca and is doing some local marketing so that the forward-thinking and community-minded or-ganizations supporting their Workplace ESL program get the recognition they deserve.

Limestone is always look-ing for new partners and en-courages any interested or-ganizations to visit canplace.ca to learn more and to find out how they might become involved.

Nancy Uchimaru is a Kingston area employment consultant currently working on the CanPlace project for Limestone Community Edu-cation.

Skills Shortage: One Solution that’s Working in Kingston

By J Andrew Tonner

Background checks are a bridge that more and more employers are hav-ing to cross these days, as it’s often part of the hiring process or a required step before getting that third (or final) interview. Often, the employers’ client needs to know that everyone work-ing on a project is bond-able...

Two main reasons that people need background checks are for employ-ment and volunteer work. A search is conducted by the RCMP through the Canadi-an Police Information Cen-ter (CPIC) in Ottawa, and is based on name and date-of-birth (DOB) information. It is also a point-in-time search, which means the search is good from “back then” to “right now”.

If you change jobs or volunteer for a different agency six months or a year after getting your CPIC

(pronounced “see-pick”), however, your previous search no longer reflects your history from “back then” to “right now”. Most employers and volunteer or-ganizations therefore prefer to be aware of your up-to-date history during the hir-ing process by requesting a new, original copy of your CPIC for their file..

Since August, 2010, however, the RCMP no longer releases criminal in-formation simply based on a name and DOB. If you do have a criminal record and you submit a CPIC applica-tion for employment, it will be returned stating, “…could not be completed…. applicant (must) submit fin-gerprints.” When submit-ting fingerprints it is best to indicate the reason is “for a Record Suspension”. That way, should you decide to proceed with an RS appli-cation sometime in the fu-ture, the fingerprint process won’t need to be repeated.

Ever wonder why you need fingerprints even though you don’t have a record and you didn’t need fingerprints previously? If your CPIC application is returned stating “…could not be completed…submit fingerprints”, either your name or your DOB matched — or closely matched — a person who has a record. In this case, you will very likely need fingerprints to prove you are the “good guy”, and that will be the norm until your “close match” gets a record sus-pension. Be aware, howev-er, that your “close match” person may never get an RS. That means each time you make a CPIC request for whatever reason, you will always need to follow-up with fingerprint verifi-cation.

It’s not a perfect system. It is, however, the only bridge we have.

J Andrew Tonner is [Ex-ecutive Director] of Impact Pardons Plus (IPP): put-ting you on the road (and a bridge) to a better tomor-row. IPP offers full, profes-sional ID service to clients who may need fingerprint-ing, record suspension (RS) (formally pardon), and U.S. waiver applications, background checks and ID photos for passports, citi-zenship/immigration, per-manent residence cards, Possession and Acquisition Licence, etc. IPP offers full ID services Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm; weekends and evenings by appointment.

Background Checks More Widely Used

Many employers or volunteer organizations now require a background check con-ducted by the RCMP through the Canadian Police Information Centre in Ottawa.

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EMPLOYER AWARD

Congratulations to the team from Brown's Fine Food at St. Lawrence College cafeteria for winning the 2012 Employer Award from the Kingston Immigration Partnership (part of KCHC). The welcoming attitude of the managers and all the sta� has provided the newcomers to Canada with a sense of belonging and made their transition to Canada easier. More importantly it has provided them with their �rst Canadian work experience which gives them a local employer reference when they graduate and are looking for positions in their �eld. The Kingston Immigration Partnership Employer Award is awarded annually to a local employer that has demonstrated success and leadership in making Kingston a more welcoming and inclusive place for immigrants

Nominees:Empire LifeStantive Technologies GroupZycom Technology

More info:www.kipcouncil.ca

Tracy Ouimet, Supervisor -

St. Lawrence College Cafeteria

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By Nick Docherty

The winner of the 2011 Kingston Immigration Part-nership (KIP) employer award, Weston Bakeries is quickly becoming a great example of a diverse and multicultural workplace. With more than 60 years in Kingston, Weston has become a mainstay of the local food manufactur-ing and distribution industry. The company employs about 70 workers in Kingston and nearly 10% are international employees.

As the plant manager, Larry Brandt is always look-ing for qualified talent and believes that it would be a mistake for employers not to consider hiring immigrants. The Kingston plant currently employs three full-time and more than five part-time inter-national employees.

With a Master’s of Food Science Engineering from Azad University, Baharak

Chegeni moved from Tehran to Kingston in 2007. Chegeni participated in a KEYS (Em-ployment Centre) mentoring program, Chegeni was able to connect with Weston Bakeries and experience the working environment. Despite her lack of floor experience, Brandt claims that her determination and willingness to take risks stood out. “She wanted to be successful and was willing to go the extra mile to do that.” Chegeni received a job offer with Weston shortly after hav-ing started in the mentoring program.

As her previous experience had been primarily concerned with European standards, Chegeni took it upon herself to become familiar with the North-American system and took courses and training. Having become well-versed in the new standards, Chege-ni helped Weston Bakeries achieve certification from the American Institute of Bak-

ing (AIB) and then improved their rating from “Good” to “Excellent” — an envious achievement for any baking manufacturer.

Taking the initiative, Chegeni implemented new quality assurance programs at her Kingston workplace. The changes which she imple-mented were so effective and innovative that in 2010 she was asked to lead a province-wide tour of Ontario Weston Bakeries and provide her rec-ommendations on quality as-surance improvements.

Starting out as a Quality Assurance Supervisor, Chege-ni was quickly promoted to a management position after having demonstrated her abil-ities. Now a Quality Assur-ance and Sanitation Manager, Chegeni’s position is highly technical, requiring not only knowledge of the machinery and its safe use, but also of potential contaminants on the microbiological level. “You

need to know the alphabet of food safety,” she says.

Her successes were not without some initial chal-lenges. “It was difficult to un-derstand the new culture,” she admits. She found the Cana-dian work culture to be much less formal than what she had experienced in Iran. “I knew what I had to look for, I just needed to have a better under-standing of the people I was dealing with.” But Chegeni took the initiative and made an extra effort to adjust. “I don’t like to be reactive, I like to be proactive. You can’t just stand right beside the pool and learn how to swim, you have to jump in the water.”

Although very much aware of the highly-qualified pool of immigrant labour available to Kingston employers, Brandt does recognize some of the barriers to immigrant employ-ment. “The biggest difficulty that we have is the language barrier.” In a manufacturing

environment, there are many health and safety related con-cerns and Brandt feels that communication is key when it comes to avoiding injuries. “Everything we do is through verbal communication.”

Speaking from personal experience, Chegeni also stresses the importance of lan-guage in the workplace. “The most important thing for [an immigrant] is language. If you cannot talk, you cannot prove yourself, no matter how smart you are.”

But Brandt also sees a tendency for Weston’s inter-nationally educated employ-ees to have a more long-term orientation, and that fits with the human resources needs of Weston. “We’re not only looking for somebody who can work on the line, we’re also looking for somebody

who will graduate into a man-agement role. They’ve come into it with long-term think-ing —they’re going to stick it out.”

Government agencies pre-dict that due to Canada’s ag-ing population, the majority of workforce growth in the future will come from im-migrants. Brandt recognizes this and is taking proactive measures to address the issue. “One of my biggest concerns now is to ensure that we have a base of people to start to take over and we’re going to have to rely on immigrants to do that.”

This story, written by Nick Docherty, is part of the second volume of “Global Talent, Lo-cal Busines”, produced by the Kingston Immigration Part-nership. Find the full publica-tion at www.kipcouncil.ca

Global Talent Featured at Weston Bakeries

Baharak Chegeni and Larry Brandt in front of the Weston Bakery, winner of the 2011 Kingston Immi-gration Partnership Employer Award.


Sustainable Kingston Welcomes the Business

Section to our Community!

Improve your bottom line by building Sustainability into

your business plan!

Find out how to become a community partner by visiting our website

www.sustainablekingston.ca

Kingston is a city that is a vital, dynamic and sustainable economic centre where research, innovation, investment, and business enterprises thrive together and where a variety of people want to visit, live, work, and do business.

Developing an economy depends on building many relationships and partner-ships with businesses, industry leaders, educational institutions, not-for-profit organizations, and the community at large. Our economy relies upon, and is built upon, a strong cultural, social, and environmental foundation.

The Economic Pillar is focused on the at-traction of new businesses and people to Kingston. This is critical to the city’s growth and sustainability and assists us in building a strong and vibrant local com-munity. The retention of talented peo-ple in the public, private, and non-profit sectors in Kingston are fundamental to achieving this. Existing businesses and the jobs they create, are critical compo-nents of a strong, sustainable economy.The intention of Sustainable Kingston is to educate, motivate and support part-ner organizations and citizens in estab-lishing, implementing and achieving their sustainability goals in support of com-munity sustainability in Kingston.

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The Confederation Tour Trolley, which be-gan 45 years ago as a Centennial project by the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce, has been sold to Kingston 1000 Islands Cruises.

2012 Chamber President John Ryce an-nounced the sale today following approval by the Chamber’s Board of Directors.

“We are very pleased that Kingston’s largest private sector attraction has stepped forward to add the Confederation Tour Trolley to its busi-ness model,” said Mr. Ryce. “The boatlines are a local and regional leader, attracting tour-ists to Kingston and the 1000 Islands, and we felt they were the best positioned to take the Trolley tour to its next stage in development.”

“The decision to divest was a result of a de-liberate change in direction for the Chamber,” said Mr. Ryce. “With our new strategic plan, we felt we needed to focus more on our key mandate of advocating for business interests in Kingston.”

“We’re thrilled and honoured to have this opportunity,” said Hugh Mackenzie, General Manager for Kingston 1000 Islands Cruises. “We think this is a great fit with our cruises and see the trolley as playing a larger role in

attracting visitors and extending stays to the benefit our local tourism economy.”

Rob Carnegie, Tourism Director for Kings-ton Economic Development Corporation (KEDCO), expressed Tourism Kingston’s sup-port for the future of the Trolley. “We share the same enthusiasm as the Chamber that one of Kingston’s largest tourism operators is taking over the trolley business. The cruiseline brings long-standing experience and an intimate knowledge of Kingston’s tourism sector and visitor needs, and we know they will bring that same level of quality and service to the trolley experience.”

Kingston 1000 Islands Cruises has been in business since 1975 and offers a wide variety of sightseeing and dining cruises under the theme of food, fun & entertainment ships. It has a fleet of three vessels: the Island Queen, Island Belle and Island Star dining ship. The company currently employs nine full-time staff and 75 seasonal staff.

The Tour Trolley has traditionally offered a 50-minute narrated sightseeing tour of the historic sites in town as well as charters for private parties.

Cruise Line Takes Over Trolley Tour

Business TodayKingsTon

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Karen SandsBob TchegusJ. Andrew TonnerNancy UchimaruDonna Woodbury

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Offers good on new and unregistered units purchased between 11/1/12-12/31/12. *On select models. See your dealer for details. **Rates as low as 2.99% for 36 months. Offers only available at participating Polaris® dealers. Approval, and any rates and terms provided, are based on credit worthiness. Other fi nancing offers are available. Applies to the purchase of all new, qualifi ed ATV and RANGER models made on the Polaris Installment Program from 11/1/12-12/31/12. Fixed APR of 2.99% , 6.9 9%, or 9.99% will be assigned based on credit approval criteria. An example of monthly payments required on a 36-month term at 2.99% is $29.08 per $1,000 fi nanced. An example of monthly payments required on a 36-month term at 9.99% APR is $32.26 per $1,000 fi nanced. See participating retailers for complete details and conditions. Warning: The Polaris RANGER and RANGER and RANGER RZR are not intended for on-road use. Driver must be at least 16 years old with a valid driver’s license to operate. RZR are not intended for on-road use. Driver must be at least 16 years old with a valid driver’s license to operate. RZRPassengers must be at least 12 years old and tall enough to grasp the hand holds and plant feet fi rmly on the fl oor. All SxS drivers should take a safety training course. Contact ROHVA atwww.rohva.org or (949) 255-2560 for additional information. Drivers and passengers should always wear helmets, eye protection, protective clothing, and seat belts. Always use cab nets. Be particularly careful on diffi cult terrain. Never drive on public roads or paved surfaces. Never engage in stunt driving, and avoid excessive speeds and sharp turns. Riding and alcohol/drugs don’t mix. Check local laws before riding on trails. ATVs can be hazardous to operate. Polaris adult models are for riders 16 and older. For your safety, always wear a helmet, eye protection and protective clothing, and be sure to take a safety training course. For safety and training information in the U.S., call the SVIA at (80 0) 887-2887. You may also contact your Polaris dealer or call Polaris at (800 ) 342-3764. ©2012 Polaris Industries Inc.

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Canadian winner. Limit one entry per person. For details, see complete Official Rules at www.polaris.com/ridewithlevi. Sponsor: Polaris Industries Inc., 2100 Hwy 55, Medina, MN 55340. **3.99% Finance Rate for 36 Months: This is a limited time offer which is valid for the

purchase of selected qualifying models and is subject to credit approval from TD Auto Finance® (TDAF) on qualified purchases financed during this program. Offer may not be combined with certain other offers, is subject to change and may be extended or terminated without

further notice. See participating retailers for complete details and conditions. Rates from other lenders may vary. Monthly payment and cost of borrowing will vary depending on amount borrowed and down payment/trade. Minimum amount to finance is $5,000. Example:

$7,500 financed at 3.99% over 36 months = 36 monthly payments of $221.40 with a cost of borrowing of $470.27 and a total obligation of $7,970.27. Freight, licence, PPSA/RPDRM, insurance, registration, any retailer administration fees and other applicable fees and taxes are

not included in the financed amount. Dealers are free to set individual prices, but must be enrolled with TDAF to participate. Professional rider on a closed course. Polaris recommends that all snowmobile riders take a training course. Do not attempt maneuvers beyond your

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By Donna Woodbury

As business leaders, we must champion our business-es and emphasize the positive. It is our responsibility to draw attention to the strong results in local businesses. It is no piece of random luck that makes companies like Kings-ton-based Eikon Device have a great year and move ahead with expansion and new head-quarters. It is no fluke that the region has experienced a strong tourist season. We con-tinue to hear about the trou-bling skilled-labour shortage which will hinder us in the short term, but benefit us over the longer term.

If you take the time to look and listen, you see surprising growth and production from local companies that have been threatening success for a while and now producing the results you don’t, but should hear about. Check out the good news stories about Hya-busa Fightwear and Trans-formix Engineering or look up Tri-Art, Mine Design and Goo Systems. Never heard of them? You will soon. There is strong growth in local indus-try; sectors as diverse as pre-cision instrument manufac-turing, apparel and processed products are strong perform-ers.

Usually we look at the

service and financial sectors to be the benchmarks, and al-though these are performing admirably, it is in the manu-facturing sectors, scientific and engineering areas that we also need to emphasize our expertise. These skills exist in Kingston and certain sectors are regarded as world leaders, but we need to recognize them to attract investment into our region. Investment in our businesses is crucial. It marks confidence in the future and it will guarantee jobs, growth and with good management.

The situation in retail is rather more complicated. The

results over the Christmas “spend” have been patchy, with strong growth in certain areas, but not in others. The huge impact of e-commerce continues its advance. Keep in mind the Darwinian max-im that it is not the biggest organism, nor the most intel-ligent organism that survives, but the one that is most easily adaptable to change. That is still true 150 years after he first observed nature in ac-tion.

Overall, we are on the right track in theory. We need to keep looking at our work-force to be sure the right skills are being taught and devel-oped. Our educational base is superb and we have schools in this area for which other regions of the nation are en-vious. Becoming involved in schools or in the new Young Chamber movement will ben-efit you and your business. Make certain therefore that not only do you support the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce in its network-ing and events, but also the Young Chamber, and remem-ber that confidence is the key to everything. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Energy and confidence will overcome all things”.

A Happy and prosperous New Year for 2013 for all of us at the Chamber.

“The future for Kingston Business in

2013 is… YOU!”

Donna Woodbury, 2013 Chair, Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce, President & Co-owner Rogers Wireless Express/WE Visual Solutions.

Connie Carrillo

Imagine that you, as em-ployer, while surfing the In-ternet, discover the following social media postings from your employees:

Comments glorifying Nazi • GermanyDescriptions of coworkers • as “aliens” and a workplace as a “lunatic asylum”Information and photo-• graphs of clientsRacist, disrespectful and • derogatory comments about the company’s owners and customersInsubordinate comments • about their supervisor

The foregoing scenarios are taken from real cases.

What are the potential risks of employees using so-cial networking sites? Some of the risks include:

Employees posting re-marks online that threaten the reputations of their employer, their supervisors with their coworkers;

Employees disclosing their employer’s intellectual property or information that is otherwise confidential;

Employees posting offen-sive remarks that may amount to discrimination or harass-ment, which may then engage the employer’s responsibili-ties toward the subjects of these remarks; and

Online postings are admis-sible as evidence in litigation.

In four of the five cases described above, courts and labour arbitrators agreed that

the employers were justified and firing employees. In the other case, the employee was suspended.

However, the results of these cases were hardly pre-ordained. After their em-ployers fired them, the em-ployees sued or their unions filed grievances. While the employers prevailed in these legal proceedings, that did not necessarily undo the damage to the reputations arising from these online postings. Further-more, in litigation, employers rarely recover their legal fees and legal proceedings can de-moralize the workplace.

Employees’ use of social networking sites is unavoid-able. Those who work for us regularly use Facebook, LinkedIn and personal blogs. But regretfully, many of these social network users — espe-cially young people — don’t think of how their online comments might affect their

employers or the customers they serve.

How can employers re-duce the risk of harmful on-line postings from their very employees? The best practice is for employers to make their expectations clear from the start. These expectations nor-mally take the form of work-place policies. Ideally, these workplace policies should be incorporated into employment contracts.

Effective workplace poli-cies remind employees of their duties toward their employer, identify the sorts of online postings that can be harmful, prohibit the anti-social use of social networking sites and describe the consequences of violating these rules.

Employers wishing to pro-tect themselves should con-sult a human resources pro-fessional who can draft poli-cies to protect their business and help design workplace programs that harness the benefits of social networking, while containing the risk of harmful online postings.

Connie Carrillo is a hu-man resources consultant op-erating as HR on Target. You can visit Connie at her web-site, www.hrontarget.com, or contact her via email at [email protected] or phone (613) 389-3265. Please note that the information pro-vided in this article is of a general nature and is not to be considered legal advice and may not apply to any specific or particular situation.

Social Networking: Risks to Employers and How to Manage Them

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EVENTS ARE PROMOTED BY BELL MEDIA EVENTS SuPPORTED BY VIA RAIL

Watch for these exciting upcoming events!For more information on

the Chamber’s events, please visit www.kingstonchamber.on.ca/events/ or call (613) 548-4453, ext. 1000.

Famous February Mixer Thursday, February 21, 4:30pm – 7:30pm. Kingston Banquet & Confer-ence Centre at Days Inn, 33 Benson St.

Sponsored by Empire Life. Join us for our biggest exhibi-tor mixer of the winter season topped off by outstanding food. Now sold out to exhibi-tors. Admission is free for at-tendees. 72 hours prior notice for cancellation for exhibi-tors.

Chamber Annual General Meeting Tuesday, March 20, 12pm – 2pm. Harbour Restaurant. Keynote Speaker: General Rick Hillier (Retired)

Chamber Annual General

Meeting Lunch featuring key-note speaker General Rick Hillier (Retired). Sponsored by Altair Electronics, speaker sponsor is TD Commercial Services. Cost for Chamber members, $45.00 plus HST, $65.00 plus HST for non-members. 72 hours prior no-tice for cancellations.

Born in Newfoundland and Labrador, General Rick Hillier joined the Canadian Forces as soon as he could. Having en-rolled in the Canadian Forces in 1973 through the Regular Officer Training Plan program, he graduated from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1975 with a Bachelor of Sci-ence Degree. After completing his armour officer classifica-

tion training, he joined his first regiment, the 8th Canadian Hussars (Princess Louise’s) in Petawawa, Ontario. Subse-quently, he served with, and later commanded, the Royal Canadian Dragoons in Canada and Germany.

Inspiration2Women Event Thursday, April 25, 8am – 5pm K-Rock Centre

Sponsored by Thomson Jemmett Vogelzeng and Union Gas. Be inspired by lead-ing Canadian women at this unique one-day event. Speak-ers include Sarah Richadson, designer and host of Sarah 101 on HGTV; Catriona Le May Doan, Bilingual Olympic Speed Skater & World Record

Holder; Deborah Kimmett, Emcee & Comedian; Gail Vaz-Oxlade, Canadian Mon-ey Management Wizard “Til Debt Do Us Part”; Susan Sly, Balance Living Expert, Au-thor. Inspiration2Women is the largest-ever event in Kingston designed to celebrate women in business, entrepreneurship and corporate leadership.

All speakers have one thing in common: a genuine desire to inspire and help other wom-en from all business sectors be successful professionally and in all spects of life. The event provides the opportunity to network and build relation-ships with others who are like-minded and share in the desire for growth and inspiration.

Chamber Tourism Mixer Thursday, May 23, 2013 5-7pm Kingston 1000 Islands Cruises, Island Star

Enjoy a cruise on the Island Star while mingling with other businesses at this event to kick off tourism. Door prizes and more!

24th Chamber Classic Golf Tournament Thursday, June 20, 2013 Tee off times: 7:30am and 1pm Colonade Golf Club

Sponsored by TJV. En-joy a great day of golf with prizes, food, networking and more at the 24th Chamber Classic Golf Tournament!

Our Members-Only Political Update Breakfast: Municipal, Provincial & Federal Visions for 2013, sponsored by Kelly Ser-vices, was held on January 15. Speakers at the event outlined our political landscape for 2013, and included Kingston’s Mayor, Mark Gerretsen; MPP John Gerretsen and MP Ted Hsu. The event was hosted by the Kingston Banquet & Conference Centre at Days Inn. L-R: MP Ted Hsu; MPP John Gerretsen; Kingston’s Mayor Mark Gerretsen; Donna Woodbury, Chair of the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce for 2013; Victoria Lessard, Kelly Services (Canada) Ltd.

Chamber Political Update Breakfast

ENTREPRENEUR CENTRE WORKSHOPSKEDCO SERVICES AVAILABLE FOR LOCAL BUSINESSES

TOURISM KINGSTON SERVICES AVAILABLE

The Kingston Economic Development Corporation (KEDCO) is committed to the key issue of long-term economic sustainability for the City of Kingston. As a Corporation, our collective success is based on the pursuit of business development opportunities and the resulting economic impact on our community - business growth and retention, job creation, labour force enhancement and sustained quality of life for all citizens. We believe people want to live, work and do business in a community which recognizes them and support their endeavours. KEDCO is your source for economic development information and assistance. We help site selectors, business owners, entrepreneurs and local organizations enhance and grow their business.

JANUARYJan 29 Business BasicsJan 31 Sole Proprietor vs. Corporation: The Advantages and Drawbacks of EachFEBRUARYFeb 7 Doing Business with the GovernmentFeb 12 Harrowsmith Business BasicsFeb 20 Intellectual Property Seminar – Part of an Overall Business StrategyFeb 26 Business BasicsFeb 27 Exploring the World of FranchisingFeb 28 Canadian Youth Business Foundation Info Session

Tourism Kingston Visitor Information Centre 209 Ontario StreetTel: [email protected]

Kingston Economic Development Corporation 945 Princess Street at Innovation Park Tel: [email protected]

Tourism Kingston supports marketing and development initiatives to grow Kingston as a destination of choice for visitors from all over the world.

We believe in making our visitor’s stay a first- class experience and we strive to ensure guests to our city experience Kingston to its fullest. Tourism Kingston works with local tourism partners, businesses and organizations to support and promote their services, activities, meetings and event needs.

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kingstoncanada.mobi

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