As the City of Burnaby plans its response to U.S. President Donald Trump's "punitive" tariffs, staff have found the city's receipts are already very Canadian.
Over the last five years, 99 per cent of the city's spending has been with Canadian vendors, according to Mayor Mike Hurley.
That's almost $3.8 billion spent on Canadian vendors, Hurley told the Burnaby NOW.
An analysis by the city's procurement team also showed 95 per cent of the vendors the city works with are Canadian.
"But because our economy is very integrated with the U.S., we want to push our vendors a little more to see if we can do even better," Hurley said.
He said city staff are on a "fact-finding mission now" to track bidders' suppliers and whether they're U.S.-based.
"It's very complicated to work your way through all of this — you'll know that even if you go to the grocery store and try to figure out what's actually Canadian."
The city is working with other municipalities and provinces to explore further strategies to strengthen local and national procurement.
"Sharing the data and sharing knowledge of how they're doing things, how we're doing things, and to be sure that we're using best practices, we need to really get those strategies down about how we're all going to help each other."
Hurley predicted the construction industry will be particularly affected by the tariffs.
"For example, I-beams that are used for heavy construction, much of that comes from the States."
'We'll become more resilient'
Hurley said he's been very supportive of the provincial and federal responses to the tariffs.
"It's very important that we all stand together, I think, and be united," he said.
"It appears that Trump's motives are to cripple the Canadian economy so that he can find a way to get at our resources — that's my read of it anyways," the mayor added.
Hurley said it will be “very difficult” to navigate the new economic realities.
"But I'm very confident that Canadians will stand together and we'll become more resilient because of this."
According to a press release, city staff plan to:
- seek competitive quotes from Canadian-owned businesses when making purchases
- require all bidders to provide a list of major suppliers and manufacturers to identify whether the contractors are sourcing materials from the U.S.
- create a "Buy Local and Buy Canadian" working group to find substitutes for U.S. products and develop a long-term strategy to build economic resilience
City council also unanimously passed a motion by the mayor Feb. 25 to ban staff from undertaking any non-essential work-related travel to the U.S. until further notice.
