BCBusiness
Red tape. Endless permits. Soaring costs. Tarriff uncertainty. Small businesses in this province are being beaten down—can they weather the storm?
In the back of his Langford distillery, Kelly Darwin mixes the spices, housemade alcohol and other ingredients needed to concoct his Apple Pie O’My Moonshine. It’s delicious. Just like your grandmother’s apple pie—if she’d bottled it at 24 percent. Darwin works away in what looks like an alchemist’s laboratory, amidst a series of large kettles, tubs and stills connected by hoses. A whiteboard displays chemical formulas. Somewhere, something is bubbling. A splash of Okanagan apple juice brings the apple pie moonshine recipe all together.
“It’s a B.C. product through and through,” says Darwin. Not that the hyper-local nature of his small business has helped him much.
The journey to get Ryes and Shine Craft Distillery—Greater Victoria’s only combination distillery and cocktail bar—from dream to reality has been a bureaucratic nightmare, perhaps familiar to other small-business owners who’ve pinballed through the system.
Darwin spent more than nine months and $1 million to get to opening day in June. Almost half the money, he estimates, has been satisfying the more than a dozen local, regional, provincial and federal government offices who are required to issue approvals. “We crawled over the finish line of opening, which is really the starting line of the actual business,” says Darwin. “But this is just the first step. Right now, we’ve got to survive.”
Survival. It’s a familiar refrain for small-business owners in B.C., who find themselves battered by a variety of factors, from taxes to staffing, parking to vandalism. Not to mention global uncertainty, tariffs and trade wars. In downtown Victoria, 48 percent of businesses in a recent survey said they’re considering not renewing their leases. Calls for major change are rising.
“From what I’m hearing from members, they’d like to see something that’s audacious, that would really bring that entrepreneurial spirit and reward that again here in the province,” said Alex McMillan, interim CEO of the BC Chamber of Commerce. “We need to see a demonstration from government that they want to see investment in British Columbia.” The B.C. government launched an “ease of doing business” review this spring, with Jobs Minister Diana Gibson (who has since been shuffled to a different ministry) saying her goal was to reduce barriers “because time is money” for businesses.
Darwin was bled for both time and money at Ryes and Shine. Liquor permitting is particularly complex in B.C. He had to submit documents multiple times, face multi-month delays and navigate government offices that don’t communicate. He paid $14,000 for a code review of a building to prove it was suitable for serving alcohol—even though the previous three tenants had all been breweries. “It’s wild and unbelievable—the red tape,” says Darwin.
The confidence level for small business in B.C. hit record lows in early 2025, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “We’re hearing from them that they are facing challenges on multiple fronts,” says CFIB’s Ryan Mitton. Vandalism and theft have hit storefront businesses hard, as part of the street disorder and addictions crisis. There’s inflation and interest rate pressures. And taxes remain prohibitive—everything from PST on capital inputs to the Employer Health Tax (EHT), WorkSafeBC premiums and the ever-rising minimum wage.
Even established small businesses are finding it tough. At Emelle’s Catering in Vancouver, which already has 26 years under its belt, government decisions like mandatory paid sick days and the EHT (created in 2019 to replace Medical Services Plan premiums) have chipped away at an already-thin bottom line. “We’re in the hospitality business, which in the grand scheme of things has been hit every which way from sideways over the last five years,” says vice-president Nicole Burke.
The EHT is 5.85 percent for businesses with payroll over $1 million. Government raised the exemption threshold from $500,000 in 2024. “They assume if your payroll is over $1 million you are a huge company with huge profits, but that’s not the case,” says Burke, whose seasonal staff can hit as high as 80 full and part-time people. “My food costs have doubled; my payroll expenses have gone up at least $100,000 in tax and sick days. “We do cost of living increases every year anyway—to everybody—which increases my exposure to health employer’s tax. So, the more we give them, the more tax we pay.”
The B.C. government knows what to do from previous small-business roundtables and advice, it just doesn’t want to listen, says Opposition jobs critic and Conservative MLA Gavin Dew.
“When I talk to small businesses they are beleaguered, shell-shocked, practically traumatized by the experience they’ve had trying to remain open and operational by years of rolling crisis, from COVID to the toxic-drug crisis to tariffs,” says Dew. “It’s the uncertainty, the constant change, and it’s absolutely exhausting.”
The smaller the business, the more tenuous the operation.
At CIRKL Pilates in Victoria’s Cook Street Village, owners Krista Bratic and Lisa Erlic admit they were lucky. Both had previous clientele and equipment, found good advisors through word of mouth and had enough saved to renovate and open their studio last September without debt. Their pitch is an authentic, traditional pilates experience.
The duo’s biggest problem? When they can’t work, everything comes crashing down. They have no employees, other than Tucker, the friendly dog who greets customers at the door. “There’s absolutely no support for business owners to take any type of time off, even for bereavement, for sick days,” says Bratic, who is thinking of starting a family and worried about how to juggle that time off. “And if we don’t work, we don’t bring in any money,” adds Erlic.
“Lisa and I wear all the hats,” says Bratic. “We work full time, we teach full time, we do the reception, we do the cleaning, we do the shopping, we do the social media and marketing.” They’d love to see the government manage a small-business fund where owners contribute, government invests the funds and owners can withdraw when they can’t work.
As a small company in a digital age, Bratic and Erlic say they’re also shocked at the hundreds of dollars a month in service fees charged by point-of-sale and credit card companies. They try to keep class prices competitive with larger, corporate-owned pilates studios, but the cost pressures are immense. “We’re trying to balance all of it and not price people out from something that is going to help their body and their mind,” said Bratic. “We really do care. In special cases we deduct from our bottom line. We offer discounts, pro bonos to certain individuals, and pro-rate their classes.”
It’s a common sentiment among small-business owners—this isn’t Amazon and they aren’t looking to dominate their sectors with immense growth. They’re following a dream.
“Not everybody wants to be a billionaire,” adds Burke, whose catering company has employed the same dishwasher, Ben, since opening day.
“Money isn’t everybody’s success metric. It’s about how we can contribute to our community. I’m really proud that we have built a business somebody could be in for 26 years. That to me is a success story, not about how much money is in a bank account. We can’t shoulder every burden or budget shortfall, so government, please help us.”
Back at Ryes and Shine, Darwin and his wife Alicia Campbell hope they can start to break even this year and recover their investments within three to four years.
“The tough part about this is we’re doing all the things [government] wants: we’re creating jobs, we’re generating revenue, tax dollars and manufacturing a product the government itself wants produced locally,” says Darwin. “And it just seems they make it more difficult every step of the way.”
It’s enough to drive you to drink. Thankfully, for that, there’s apple pie moonshine.
Suggestions from small-business advocates to help the sector include:
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