To the young entrepreneurs – ages 7 and 5 – it seemed like a win-win situation: Hawk ice-cold lemonade to pedestrians and cyclists on a hot day and rake in money to help pay for summer camp.
But their business plan was swiftly derailed by officials in Ottawa, who cited the girls’ lack of a permit to shut down the C$1-a-glass lemonade stand.
Eliza Andrews, 7, and her sister Adela, 5, had been running the stand on their front lawn for several weeks. As the date of their summer camp neared, the pair eyed their profit margins and considered a crucial question: location.
On Sunday they relocated, setting up shop on a grassy median that flanked a stretch of road open only to cyclists and foot traffic on Sunday mornings.
Business was just beginning to pick up – the two had earned C$52 in about an hour – when a passerby stopped to ask them if they had a permit for their lemonade stand. It wasn’t long after that a uniformed official with the National Capital Commission, a federal agency, arrived on the scene.
“They were polite, but said we had to pack up and leave,” Kurtis Andrews, the father of the two girls, told the Toronto Star. His offer to pay for a permit on the spot yielded no compromise. “For a couple of kids, it’s kind of intimidating, with the flashing lights and guy in black uniform.”
First reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the story made headlines across Canada. Many on social media took aim at Ottawa – playfully rehashing the capital’s reputation as the “city that fun forgot” – while several Conservative politicians seized on the story as an example of how government overreach can strangle entrepreneurship.
On Monday, the Andrews visited the federal agency to apply for a permit. Perhaps conscious of the many who had framed the girls’ foray into Ottawa’s byzantine bureaucracy as a struggle of David against Goliath, an agency spokesperson apologised to the young entrepreneurs and offered to waive the C$35 permit fee.
In a later statement, the agency defended its earlier actions and made it clear that no exceptions would be made for the girls. “Given the location of the lemonade stand, the Conservation Officer acted in good faith in applying the federal land use rules in place.”
The situation could have been handled differently, it acknowledged. “Children’s lemonade stands are a time-honoured summer tradition that contributes to a lively capital and the NCC wants to encourage these activities whenever possible.” Officials said the girls’ permit application would be likely expedited so that they could have the stand up and running by this weekend.
The timeline was questioned by the girls’ father who pointed to the magnitude of paperwork being demanded for the stand. “The girls can’t provide proof of insurance. They can’t provide a site map. And so on and so forth,” he told CTV News. “So I expect that there’s going to have to be some ... modification of the normal bureaucracy here.”
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