Page 36 - GBC Fall 2022 Eng

inflation, of course, and inflation in Canada is at 8.1%, year-on-year, as of June 2022; the highest level to which Canadians have been subjected in 39 years.
Increased fuel prices were an effect, initially, of increased demand when lockdown measures were eased. Now, however, the situation is exacerbated beyond anything that most of us are familiar with by geopolitical factors and worsening supply chain issues. The dynamic complexity of the factors affecting the cost of fuel and thus, too, of everything else, leave business owners stranded, gripped by economic realities over which they have no control. If government and market responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the perception of ongoing virological endanger- ment, remain key factors for golf business owners, this is nothing compared to the consequences that
will accrue to the war in Ukraine, the threat of intensified conflict in the rest of Europe (consider Lithua- nia’s blockade of Kaliningrad, or Russia’s 60% reduction in natural gas flowing to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline), and issues affecting the Global South, such as looming food shortages in Africa.
Like other businesses, Canadian golf operations face these realities with the awareness that they have no real capacity to affect them. They struggle to insulate themselves against the uncertain consequences, direct or indirect, of these rapidly developing, unpredictable factors, already coping with the consequences— coming on top of government- enforced operational restrictions in 2020 and 2021—of record-setting energy price increases at the end of last year and the beginning of 2022.
COMMON UTILITY BILL ERRORS
Can golf courses—once they have addressed obvious issues relating to consumption and efficiency—do anything further, in the face of factors so far outside their control, to bolster their chances of weather- ing the storm that seems to be rising?
In fact, they can. A more granularlevelofbusinessanalysis than that invoked above is often overlooked, which refers, not to market trends, or to rates of energy consumption, or to efficiencies, but to the terms and conditions affecting utility and other contracts, as well as theproblematicconductofutilities andotherserviceproviders.
In fact, there are a wide range of issues that go undetected in the background of golf course operations, which influence the rates that these pay for their electricity, natural gas, water/sewer, industrial gases, waste and recycling, and
Contact us at:
4750 Yonge St., Suite 309 Toronto, ON M2N 0J6 (416) 907-7163 info@utilityadvocates.com www.utilityadvocates.com
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