By Donald Morton | North Frontenac News Media – NFNM | November 6 2025
The Township is preparing to spend public money sending council members to out-of-town trade shows. On the table are the Quinte Sportsman Show in Belleville from March 13 to 15, 2026, the Ottawa Boat and Outdoor Show from February 19 to 22, 2026, and the Toronto Sportsmen’s Show from March 19 to 22, 2026. Internal estimates list about 1,500 dollars for Quinte, about 6,500 dollars for Ottawa, and about 8,500 dollars for Toronto. That is roughly 16,500 dollars before staff time, printing, and the extras that never make the summary. Round it and the Township is close to twenty thousand dollars to stand on convention carpet and talk about how beautiful this place is.
Permanent residents keep the place functioning. We watch launches, check properties in winter, clear small messes before they become big problems, and keep an eye on the roads when the lights in seasonal places are off. Day to day we still live with very little. We have community halls and a waste site basically in town, not even a transfer station. A dependable year-round bakery is missing. Small commercial bays to rent at a realistic price are missing. A simple fitness room is missing. A seniors option like a nurse station for routine in-home visits is missing. Even a simple cafe is missing. This is the baseline that sits beside the trade show invoices.
There is a second reality. North Frontenac is already advertised every hour without buying a single booth. Short term rentals and Airbnbs are blasting our lakes and cabins across Ontario and beyond. That exposure funnels thousands of eyes to this township year round. It is constant. It is measurable in listing views and reviews. It is not paid for by the Township. Any proposal to spend close to twenty thousand dollars to “be seen” needs to explain why three weekends on a convention floor outperform the advertising that already reaches people while they are planning a trip on their phones and computers.
Modern promotion does not live in convention halls. It lives on social media and the internet. Successful operators maintain rich presences on campground forums, hunting communities, and other outdoor activity forums and groups where trip decisions are actually made. They push factual updates in real time. They buy targeted exposure to the exact audiences that convert. They track clicks, inquiries, bookings, and cost per result. They know by noon what worked that morning. If the Township wants to call this spending economic development, it should be able to show how trade shows beat a twelve month online program that does the same work but provides provable leads that can be followed up on in the same day.
Facts are what matter now. If trade shows are the right tool, the file should already contain an authorizing resolution with a dollar cap and a list of who is going. It should contain a schedule of pre-booked meetings with named companies. It should contain the lead export from the badge scanners, the follow ups sent within seventy two hours, and the bookings tied to unique codes or URLs six months later. It should contain the total cost with receipts, mileage, per diems, hotels, printing, and staff time costed. Put those documents beside each other. If they exist, publish them. If they do not, this is field trip, not investment opportunity or a sales trip.
There is also a missing lane for local youth. If the goal is economic development, the record should show time and money spent giving young residents a way in. That means basic entrepreneur training that covers permits, HST, insurance, customer care, and simple bookkeeping. That means a youth committee with a small budget and responsibility for real projects. That means practical programs that teach outdoors skills, hunting and fishing rules, and self reliance in a way that is safe and lawful. That means a room with a few computers where young people learn editing, posting, and community moderation so they can help run an evidence based online presence. One part time position for a local online coordinator who answers questions where visitors actually ask them and who posts to the right forums and groups would deliver measurable results and work a resident can bank on.
The question is not abstract. What did we spend and what did we get that we can prove. If the answer is a stack of receipts and no conversions, the conclusion is obvious. The land is already drawing people. The internet is already pointing them here. The file should show that public money is buying results that these forces did not already create. Until the record proves that, calling the trip promotion asks residents to pay for a story instead of paying for outcomes.
