The more businesses that respond to a survey launched by Cochrane's economic recovery task force, the better.

An online survey on the town's Let's Talk Cochrane platform is designed to give the task force data necessary to determine where it should focus its efforts to best assist the business community.

Business development manager Mike Korman says the task force hopes to get 200 to 300 responses over the next few weeks. 

"We've created a survey to capture some real hard data to figure out what our next steps really are," says Korman. "I don't think we can formulate decisions on what people have heard. So we're really looking to this data to give us something to work off of."

"We know that some people have opened during the provincial phase 1 on May 14, and we know some haven't. We know that some people are struggling with getting some personal protection equipment, and some aren't."

"We want to have an understanding of where we should be focusing our time and efforts."

The 14-question survey is straight forward and specific.

It first seeks the type of business completing the survey, how it has been impacted by COVID-19, and if they were able to reopen in stage one of the province's relaunch.

If the business wasn't able to relaunch even if they were eligible, it seeks to understand the barriers the business faced.

Information on the financially impacted is sought, as is the anticipated impact over the next six weeks.

"It's giving people an ability to assess really how they feel things are going and where we can really focus our efforts," says Korman.

The task force has two meetings under its belt. It's currently in the initial react stage.

After the second rebuild phase, it reaches a third and the longer-term rebuild stage that will be deal with questions around the new normal. It will then be able to return to the long-term vision of the 2020-2030 business development strategy that was approved by town council in February.

Cochrane's Business Development department provides additional information that may be valuable to businesses here.