Most business in Penticton not approved to take evacuee vouchers

Thousands of evacuees from the Bald Range fire rushed to safety in Penticton, but many business owners probably didn’t think to get signed up for the government’s emergency voucher program.

Visit Penticton and the Penticton Chamber of Commerce are trying to let businesses know that they can still sign up to be eligible to accept Emergency Support Services vouchers from evacuees for food, lodging and other essentials.

Visit Penticton’s executive director Kevin Pearce said he heard there were long lines at locations that do accept the vouchers and decided it was important to spread the word since no one saw this coming.

“I don’t think anybody started the year thinking that there’d be a mass evacuation to town. If you have an independent business, one coffee shop or restaurant, you wouldn’t think to call the government, say, ‘what happens if there’s food vouchers, can they come to me?’” Pearce told iNFOnews.ca.

Businesses just have to fill out an emergency support supplier services form and email it to the government in order to start the process to be able to accept vouchers from evacuees and be reimbursed later by the province.

Evacuees who need assistance can apply online for emergency support services.

“The reason why they have this supplier agreement is because the government needs to know who to pay and where to send the money when the business collects the voucher,” Pearce said.

Larger chains like White Spot, Denny’s, Earls, Real Canadian Superstore, Marks Work Warehouse and many hotel chains are already on the list to accept vouchers if evacuees have them.

“In almost every major city hub, you’d find those businesses. So that’s probably why they have those contracts already in place from previous events that have happened,” he said.

The provincial government couldn’t reasonably take the initiative to set up voucher agreements with every business in the province, he said.

“To be fair to them, they’re based in Victoria. They don’t know where these emergencies are going to happen. These supplier agreements are in place probably at the beginning of the year or have been longstanding for many years,” Pearce said.

Michael Magnusson, the executive director of the Penticton Chamber of Commerce, said the priority right now is getting more businesses approved to take vouchers and to look at the system as a whole when the chaos is over.

“Once this emergency has passed and we can reflect on where things went well and what areas need improvement, we will begin those discussions with the appropriate organizations and government leaders,” Magnusson said in a press release.

Pearce said the goal in the future is to get the tourism industry prepared to use its resources to help in any emergency as quickly as possible.

“If this ever happens again, we can immediately deploy our team on the ground here that’s trained on their systems, understand how it works, and hit the ground running a little faster. And I would encourage other communities to do the same,” he said.