Dundas St. name change potentially 'very disruptive' to small biz: CFIB

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Changing the name of Dundas St. will leave small businesses to contend with a pile of paperwork on top of the daily challenges of maintaining their operations, says the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

The street is home to 4,500 businesses and of those, approximately 60 have “Dundas” as a part of their name, noted Julie Kwiecinski, the CFIB’s provincial affairs director.

“Changing a street name for any reason would need a lot of paperwork at all levels of government on top of having to do your internal stuff like informing customers, suppliers and anyone else involved in your business operations,” said Kwiecinski.

Marketing materials, business cards and store signs are examples of things that businesses could have to change if city council goes ahead with its plan to change the name of the 23 kilometres of the street — named after controversial 18th-century politician Henry Dundas — that runs through Toronto. The move to make the change came after many took umbrage with the Dundas’ connection to the slave trade.

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“So it may look like a small thing, but these are the steps that a business has to take. So it could be very disruptive.”

Toronto council voted in favour of changing the street’s moniker two years ago and is waiting for a report this fall which is expected to shortlist alternative names for the arterial road.

Councillor Shelley Carroll recently told Newstalk 1010 that given the city’s $1.5 billion budget shortfall, city council will not immediately act to make any changes because “we don’t have the money to do it right now.”

Kwiecinski added that so far, she hasn’t heard a lot from small businesses about the name change.

“What we find with our businesses, and I see this day in, and day out, I’ve been doing this job with CFIB for seven years, unless the thing is actually a thing, it’s a rule in place, you don’t hear about it,” she said.