The Mayor’s Business Progress Breakfast is usually an update on local entrepreneurial efforts, but this morning's event was a look at how everyone can make progress, both as a business and as a society.
More than 200 people filed into Liberty North for a light breakfast and a chance to hear about some heavy issues facing a large portion of communities around the country.
The guest speaker was Mark Brand, an entrepreneur with 11 businesses under his belt and who is a part of countless charitable initiatives.
Brand says he wants to breathe new life into struggling and disjointed communities through his work in social-impact business. He also tours the country speaking to audiences through his Passion x Purpose x Profanity platform.
Brand told BarrieToday he got to speed on the city, alongside some of his local hosts, before today's event and learned about some issues facing the community.
“When I went to dinner last night, I didn’t talk much. I just kind of listened for a solid three and half hours about the new Sandbox Centre, about Lucy’s Place, about all of these projects and the amount of passion that exuberated from the people talking about them,” he said.
“I did a little bit of research on the community projects and the people before I came here, and Facebook always makes things look good," Brand added. "But then I got here and it’s real."
Brand singled out Tim Kent from Redwood Park Communities and Brandon Day from Community Builders for their "powerful" work in the area.
The perception of people who are facing barriers in society is also changing, Brand said. Individuals with addiction and mental-health issues, those battling homelessness or with a history of incarceration are being given job opportunities with his companies.
“Inclusion is key,” Brand told BarrieToday.
Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman addressed the crowd and talked about the role of municipalities in the progress of society and business.
“The complexity of the issues Mark has talked about this morning -- the opioid crisis, homelessness, poverty, climate change and the issues that are affecting our cities -- is increasing. The complexity is increasing,” Lehman said.
The mayor also said he had something that he needed to get off his chest.
“There are 444 municipalities in Ontario and what frustrates me, what’s been bothering me the last few months, is that we in city government have a bit of a culture of complicity," Lehman said. "We say to ourselves that we’re the poor cousins of the Confederation. We don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough power to tackle these issues, so we’re going to stay in our lane. We’re going to fix roads and try to do the best we can with what we normally do.
"What’s bothering me is that it's a cop out," he added. “I hate being told to stay in my lane."
Municipalities have to "embrace disruptive ways of doing things," Lehman said, which means collaborating with organizations to address issues in the community that require a different mindset.
Lehman told BarrieToday that the progress breakfast event began a few years ago as a standard report on the city. But this year, he said he wanted to change it up.
“Mark Brand is an immensely impactful speaker on how we think about the marginalized in our community and how we grow our workforce to include people with barriers to employment, such as those with physical disabilities or who have a rough history," he said.
"Mark’s point on loyalty from your employees making your business stronger resonated with me, when you see the fact that the people he gave a chance to have been with him for years and are his best workers," Lehman added. "Business owners need to start thinking outside the box and in turn, will drastically help the economy, in part, society.”
