When Will Our Ship Come Back In?
Mark Leger is the editor and part-owner of Huddle. This is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region. It’s published first as a Saturday morning newsletter – sign up and received our free daily newsletter as well.
We live near the tip of Saint John’s southern peninsula. The cruise ships have loomed large in the imaginations of my children as we have watched them come and go from May to October of each year.
When he was very young, my son Jack referred to them as “his ships” and it was a thrill for all of us to go onboard one when he played his cello in a Sistema fundraising concert for passengers in the fall of 2019, just months before the arrival of Covid-19.
Pre-pandemic, the passengers from the ships helped animate our uptown core for a few months each year. In January of 2020, Port Saint John projected a record-breaking year with more than 90 vessel calls from 15 different lines set to break the 200,000-passenger record set in 2010. In small cities like Saint John, Charlottetown, and Halifax, this represents a significant boost to the economy with thousands of people walking the streets, through markets, coffee shops, and retail stores.
Then the pandemic struck, and one cruise season was cancelled and then another, dealing devastating blows to the broad range of businesses that relied upon that segment of the tourism sector in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In June of last year, Port Saint John CEO Jim Quinn said the cancelled 2020 season alone could represent a $100-million hit to the regional economy.
I often think I’ll know things are back to normal again when I see those ships come back into the harbour again. My thoughts turned to the industry this week as New Brunswick moved aggressively toward the green phase of recovery, dissolving family and friend “bubbles,” allowing restaurants to open at full capacity and opening the province’s borders to travellers from across the country.
Nova Scotia is opening up more slowly because it had a more recent outbreak but is loosening more restrictions too. Restaurants can open to patrons for indoor dining with a maximum of 10 people per table. All retail businesses can open to 50 percent capacity, and gyms and fitness facilities can also operate at 50 percent capacity. The government is opening its borders to other Atlantic provinces but not until June 23 and will welcome people from the rest of Canada in mid-July, according to the latest plan.
Some industries will rebound faster than others of course, with the cruise sector being one of the last because ships won’t be allowed back in until the 2022 season. But the economy is already showing signs of recovery in the region, according to a new report from the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, even though it was slower in some sectors than others.
The APEC report said the region is in relatively better shape coming out of the pandemic because the economy shrank 4 percent compared to 5.3 percent in the rest of the country, in part because of lower Covid-19 caseloads in the region.
Employment levels are beginning to return to normal in some industries, the report said. Accommodations and food services sectors are still the hardest hit, but they were back to operating at only a 20 percent decrease in employment in May compared to early 2020 before the pandemic.
The transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, utilities, and healthcare sectors are close to pre-pandemic levels in May, and the financial service, professional service, and public administration sectors actually experienced an estimated increase in employment of about 13 percent.
“Overall employment has bounced back, but the economic recovery remains uneven across industries,” said Fred Bergman, APEC’s Senior Policy Analyst. “Retail trade and housing are contributing to growth across the region, while exports are generally on the rebound.”
The New Brunswick chambers of commerce CEOs were certainly excited to see things open up, according to a story by Huddle reporter Liam Floyd. But Fredericton Chamber of Commerce CEO Krista Ross says businesses will need the support of their communities and governments.
“Hospitality, air travel, restaurants, arts and entertainment, they’re expecting that it may be quite some time before they get back to pre-pandemic levels of business even when all the restrictions are lifted,” said Ross.
“Now is [the businesses’] opportunity to try to get back on their feet financially and so we have to be part of that equation. We simply can’t let our feet off the gas at this point.”
One of the industries that will need additional support is businesses dependent on the cruise sector.
Just this week, Halifax reporter Derek Montague wrote a story on Ambassatours, which operates a variety of sightseeing tours and activities geared toward cruise passengers in the Halifax area and the double-decker Pink Bus Tours in Saint John. Company CEO Dennis Campbell says the company has lost $4-million since the beginning of the pandemic and assumed $3-million in debt to stay afloat.
He says the government will have to continue to provide financial support, open the U.S./Canada border this summer, if possible, and announce a plan soon for the resumption of the cruise industry in 2022.
“If they don’t act soon, we won’t have a cruise ship season next season, and that would be catastrophic for the industry in Canada,” he said.
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We still have reason to optimistic, of course. In his conversation with Liam, Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce CEO John Wishart said the province faces challenges, but it’s in a much better place than it was a year and a half ago.
“The last 15 months have been a bit like running a marathon, but never being able to see the finish line,” said Wishart. “I think maybe we are starting to see the finish line.”
I’ll see the finish line when I see the first ship on the horizon. As a city-centre resident, I feel the absence of those hulking ships and the flocks of people that roamed the streets of the city for a few hours before hopping back on board for their next destination. With the office workers not fully back either, the sidewalks, markets and city centre malls are relatively quiet.
On the busy days, pre-pandemic, when there were up to three ships in the harbour at the same time, I would sometimes get annoyed by the congested pedestrian traffic in the city centre. I now look forward to tripping over people in the City Market again. That’s when I’ll know our ship has come back in.
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