Gardeners, janitors, home renovators and other businesses that are mobile in nature are penalized by having to pay for business licences in multiple municipalities, according to the Burnaby Board of Trade.
Paul Holden, president of the board, and Cory Redekop, the board's events manager, spoke on the issue at the June 18 Burnaby council meeting.
"It is an issue being addressed in many municipalities," Holden told council, mentioning the Okanagan, the Greater Victoria area, North and West Vancouver, and the Fraser Valley, which is starting an inter-municipal mobile business licensing pilot project.
Working with other nearby municipalities to introduce mobile business licences would streamline the process, allowing business owners to buy a mobile licence in their community that would enable them to travel to other municipalities for work, Holden said.
Municipalities that have introduced mobile licensing have "greater licensing compliance," he added.
But council had some concerns about the shared responsibility between municipalities, and questioned who would be responsible for enforcing licences and ensuring bad business owners couldn't use the mobile licences to keep their business going, if there were complaints or issues with the business in one community.
"Can they quickly be put out of business?" Coun. Nick Volkow asked the delegation.
Coun. Paul McDonell was concerned that licenses might be cheaper in one municipality over another and wanted to know how it would affect the city's licensing revenues.
Holden and Redekop said they would have to get back to council about where the burden for enforcement would sit, but added the mobile licensing fee would be higher than for standard licenses, which should balance out any licensing revenue lost by cities.
Burnaby-based businesses would still have to buy licences in Burnaby, whether standard or mobile, Redekop added.
Mayor Derek Corrigan was worried that "fly by night" companies might have more leeway to cheat customers if enforcement requirements of each municipality weren't clear.
While he said he thought it was an interesting concept, Corrigan pointed out that Vancouver, Surrey and Richmond are planning on launching a mobile business licence pilot project together but did not invite Burnaby to participate.
"They're not allowing the other municipalities to be a part of the pilot," he said. "We weren't invited to the party."
Corrigan said the city would have to see how the pilot works out before it would consider being part of such a program and suggested the Burnaby Board of Trade speak to counterparts in cities participating in the pilot project about inviting Burnaby to the table in the future.
