Business community remains optimistic

"I don't expect any real change," said West Island CLD's industrial commissioner Gerry Arsenault. He told The Chronicle there had been no significant lay-offs in the area yet. "Across the Pfizer-Wyeth network, they're going to cut 6,000 jobs," Arsenault said, but whether that will affect jobs based in Pfizer's head office in Kirkland, or Wyeth-Ayerst's locale in the West Island-adjacent St. Laurent borough, is unclear at the time. Arsenault said that, historically, eras of economic recession see the creation of more small businesses, as people are more willing to take a risk. "There is a lot of small businesses that get started when times are tough," he said. Since people may become uncertain of their employment status two to three months down the line, they are more willing to take a chance, he said. Sylva Yvanova, who owns and operates Floriste Karisma, a small flower and gift shop in Beaconsfield's Beaurepaire Village, said she was not expecting the recession to hit the West Island area full-force either. "This is a high-income area," she said, adding that perhaps people with a lot riding in the stock market may feel a sting. Yvanova applauded some of the government's announced measures to help out businesses, including a cut on corporate taxes. She also praised the increased credit flow toward federally owned banks such as the Business Development Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada, which should make it easier for Canadian companies to access credit loans. As for the effects of the recession on her own business, Yvanova said it was too early to call a forecast, but she has already felt it a little. As a florist, she takes special orders from corporate clients, she explained. Some recently cancelled their renewal orders. "You can't go without paper for your printer, but you can go without flowers," she explained. West Island Chamber of Commerce's director-general Andrée Bélanger encouraged West Islanders to keep an optimistic tone. "We're all in the same boat together," she said, adding she has not heard of any of the chamber's members being hit very badly by the recession yet. Bélanger hopes the government's announced money toward infrastructure would be poured into local public transit at least in some fashion. "We need to get people to work, we want to make it so that people can get to work," she said.