Campbell River
Review the Business Climate
How it's done
The business climate is the general economic environment that local businesses operate in. Reviewing and understanding the local business climate provides valuable insights about the economy, costs, risks, and incentives that may impact the success of your business. This activity will guide you to better understand the business climate in Campbell River and help you answer the following fundamental questions.
What is the business climate in Campbell River?
We have compiled the most important aspects of Campbell River’s business climate as an interactive dashboard below. This dashboard provides valuable economic, resident, household, dwelling and development indicators that may influence the success of your business.
What costs and assistance should I know about?
Whether you have a new or existing business it is critical to be aware of costs, incentives and grants that impact your business. This dashboard provides you with a snapshot of the major costs of conducting business in Campbell River and assistance available to Campbell River businesses.
Each year, properties in the City of Campbell River are assessed property taxes that help pay for city services such as recreation facilities, parks and trails, city streets and storm drain systems. Some property taxes are based on the assessed values, while other taxes are a flat amount for each parcel.
What is the tax rate? When the annual budget is adopted by Council for the current year, Council passes a bylaw. This bylaw sets a levy rate for every taxable parcel of land, as defined on the BC Assessment Roll. This levy must be sufficient to raise revenue to pay all debts and obligations of the City falling due within the year. This rate applies to each $1,000 of assessed property value. This rate is referred to as the General Tax Levy. The city of Campbell River is not the only authority that taxes properties in the City. The City also serves as the collector for other taxing bodies, such as:
- Provincial School Taxes
- Strathcona Regional District
- Comox-Strathcona Regional Hospital District
- BC Assessment (BCA)
- Municipal Finance Authority (MFA)
The City of Campbell River has little or no control over other taxing authorities’ levies nor the way they are distributed to properties in the City. However, to reduce the administrative cost of billing and collecting these other property taxes, the city of Campbell River is the designated collector and includes these levies on the tax bill sent to property owners each year.
Property tax rates can be found here.
More information about property taxes can be found here.
The Development Permit Handbook provides a detailed summary of the application requirements and the Official Community Plan’s form and character guidelines. The goal is to provide clear and consistent information to the development community, while streamlining the application review process. The handbook can be found here: Development Permit Handbook.
The City of Campbell River has competitive development application fees. The fee schedule can be found here: Development Application Fees.
You will need a City Business Licence if you carry on any business venture within City limits. Business Licence fees are $150 a year, or $75 for a seasonal six-month licence. More information about Campbell River Business Licences can be found here.
If your business does work or provides services throughout communities in the Central Vancouver Island area, then an Inter-Municipal Business Licence may make it easier and more cost effective to do business. The cost of a primary Business Licence in the City of Campbell River is $150, and the Inter-Municipal Business Licence an additional $150. More information about the Inter-Municipal Business Licence Program can be found here.
The Government of Canada Explore Career Wages Report offers detailed information about the cost of labour in this region.
The Province of BC’s Cost of Living Calculator is a helpful tool for comparing the cost of living in various locations in the province.
Downtown Revitalization Tax Exemption
The City of Campbell River has a Downtown Revitalization Tax Exemption Bylaw that is intended to promote revitalization of specified areas in the downtown core by providing a tax break for new construction or redevelopment of existing buildings.
Any renovation or new construction of multi-family or commercial projects within the defined areas are eligible for some portion of tax exemption from the municipal portion of taxes.
More information about the Downtown Revitalization Tax Exemption can be found here.
CRadvantage
CRadvantage is a municipal initiative that provides businesses and the public with access to inexpensive, high-speed fibre-optic broadband networking. Campbell River is the first municipality on Vancouver Island to offer an open-access network of this kind.
CRadvantage is helping to position Campbell River as a top tech community by enabling high-speed, high-bandwidth internet connectivity in the city’s downtown core. How fast is it? CRadvantage provides symmetrical (identical upload and download) bandwidth scalable to 1 gigabit per second. This puts businesses in Campbell River on equal footing with competitors in urban centres such as Vancouver or San Francisco.
More information about CRadvantage can be found here.
- Community Futures Strathcona
- Island Coastal Economic Trust
- Innovation Island
- Campbell River Area Angel Group
- Vantec Angel Network
- Information from the Government of Canada about Indigenous business-development programs
- Information about loans, grants and funding from the Province of BC
- Information about business support from the Government of Canada
- Futurpreneur Canada
- Business Development Bank of Canada
- Canada Business Network Website
- Innovate BC
- Foresight
- British Columbia Tourism Resilience Network
- Information about funding sources for tourism stakeholders from Destination British Columbia
- Searchable funding and grants database on the Government of British Columbia’s website
- Small Business BC
- Women’s Enterprise Centre
- Information from Heritage BC about funding opportunities
- Information from the Government of Canada about funding for culture, history and sport
- Information from the Government of British Columbia about funding for arts and culture
The City of Campbell River is participating in the BC Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) Entrepreneur Immigration—Regional Pilot. This program is designed for entrepreneurs from around the world who propose to establish and actively manage new businesses in communities outside urban areas.
Applications for the program must include business plans that fall into one of these three economic development industry subsectors:
- Wood product manufacturing
- Professional, scientific and technical services
- Food services and drinking places
More information about the BC PNP can be found here.
How do I use this information?
Having access to business climate statistics and information is one thing, but it's quite another to use data effectively and in a way that will benefit your business. This next section will help you do just that. Learn how to use this information to make better business decisions.
Monitor the local business climate
On-going assessment of the business climate is an essential part of operating a competitive business. In any business climate, there are numerous factors outside your control that will impact your business, both positively and negatively. The health of the economy impacts all businesses, but small businesses usually feel the effect of economic changes faster than big businesses. Improvements in the economy typically provide a rapid increase in new opportunities for small businesses, while an economic downturn can have a significant and prolonged negative impact.
Unfortunately, you can’t influence the economy, but you can monitor the business climate indicators provided above and then take the necessary actions to minimize risks to your business. Staying up to date with the business climate can also help you identify new opportunities that your business can take advantage of.
Know your costs
All industries are unique and incur different types of costs when starting or operating. Understanding these costs is essential when it comes to setting prices, budgeting and planning for growth or downturns. We’ve provided some of the local costs associated with taxes, development and labour that often get overlooked by businesses. There may be other municipal and provincial costs that apply to your business so we encourage you to contact us to find out more.
Where can I learn more about the business climate?
While we are providing you with a range of valuable information about the business climate, the fact is that there's much more available. In this section we provide you with links to other websites that will supplement our information and help to keep your finger on the pulse.
There may also be other municipal and provincial costs that apply to your business so we encourage you to contact us to find out more.
| BCStats |
| British Columbia Ministry of Finance |
| Statistics Canada |
| OECD |
