The Canadian Federation of Independent Business(CFIB) is handing out their annual "Paperweight Awards," and the City of Moose Jaw is one of the "winners". 

According to the CFIB, the Paperweights "shine a light on the worst examples of red tape headaches for business owners across the country, ranging from the eye-rolling to the downright destructive."

"The City's lack of communication with businesses located on High Street West, really was beyond appalling," said CFIB Executive Vice President, Laura Jones. "It's not that you don't expect some delays with some construction projects. But we do expect governments to be proactive in communicating with business owners."

Don McKenzie, Owner of Water Vision Services, is one of those business owners and he says this award is very well deserved. "I lost a lot of money over this deal." McKenzie said. "I've lost a lot of good customers who I still haven't seen come back into my store. But I'm part of Moose Jaw and my store is going to be here a long time," he added.  

The city was nominated for the award after CFIB's Saskatchewan office was asked by a number of frustrated business owners to look into the High Street project. "It's very representative of frustration that many business owners across Canada feel when governments aren't communicating well with them," said Laura Jones of CFIB. "And that's a big part of red tape."

They said, "they are dedicated to increasing business owners' chances of success by driving policy change at all levels of government." 

When asked for a comment regarding the award, the City of Moose Jaw released the following statement from Mayor Tolmie: "“We appreciate the issues faced by High Street property owners and at our first opportunity in May of 2018 the City of Moose Jaw took over the project from the initial contractors. We ensured project completion while executing frequent, consistent communication to area property owners and residents regarding the construction timeline. While the CFIB focuses time and effort on looking back, the City of Moose Jaw is focused on further refining our construction and communication practices as we continue to address repairing and replacing our City’s long-ignored infrastructure.”