Peter Young Insurance

05/26/2026

Business owners don’t realize wildfire season can impact their insurance long before flames ever reach their property.

Once wildfires break out nearby, many insurance companies begin placing binding restrictions on affected regions. That can mean:
• No new policies
• No coverage increases
• Delays closing property purchases
• Problems securing financing
• Or businesses discovering too late they’re underinsured

We’re starting to see conditions in Atlantic Canada that many once thought only happened in Western provinces.

If you own commercial property, rental buildings, development land, or operate in rural areas, reviewing your insurance before wildfire season is becoming increasingly important.

Because once restrictions are in place, your options can shrink fast.

Wildfire preparedness isn’t just about protecting buildings anymore, it’s about protecting your ability to operate, grow, borrow, and recover after a loss.

Most businesses won’t think about this until it becomes a problem.

Remember the chaos last summer?

Peter Young Insurance

05/20/2026

The auto industry crossed 20% EV sales globally. Used car dealers and service stations should be paying attention.

Depreciation curves on used EVs are still being written in real time. Nobody really knows what a 3-year-old electric vehicle is worth yet and that uncertainty lands directly on your lot and your floor plan financing.

For service stations, the shift is simpler: fewer oil changes, fewer exhaust systems, fewer of the high-margin jobs that have kept the bays full for decades.

Neither of these is a crisis today. But both are risky.

Is your coverage keeping pace with what’s actually sitting on your lot?

05/19/2026

Atlantic Canadian business owners and consumers are already being squeezed from every direction. Proposed border tolls between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are one more turn of the wrench.

The conversation keeps focusing on the cost of the toll itself. But that’s not really where the impact lands.

It lands on the restaurant owner in Sackville whose regulars come from Amherst. The contractor who pulls crews from both provinces on the same job. The small retailer who competes with online shopping and can’t afford to lose any foot traffic at all.

The pressure doesn’t announce itself. It shows up quietly.. in a customer who stops coming as often, a supplier who has to charge more to cover their costs, an employee who starts looking for work closer to home.

As a broker, I work with business owners across Atlantic Canada who are already making hard calls about where to cut. Insurance is usually one of the first things they start questioning when margins get tight and that tells me something about where their head is at.

We’re seeing the same dynamic in auto sales consumers growing more cautious about total ownership costs, dealerships operating leaner as buyer confidence softens.

It’s all connected.

What types of businesses do you think are struggling right now?

05/15/2026

..the best call you’ll ever get is the one where they tell you to hang up.

The calls I get praised for most aren’t the ones where I saved someone money.

They’re the ones where I told someone their coverage was fine and to stay put.

Had a conversation recently with a used auto dealer who’d been getting calls from two or three brokers a month, all wanting to quote his account. Some were pitching, a few were begging.

When I looked at his situation I noticed a solid broker relationship, competitive rates, and no gaps worth chasing.

I actually felt bad and apologized before saying:

“You’re in good shape. Don’t let anyone waste your time here, including me.”

He thanked me more genuinely for that five-minute call than clients I’ve spent months helping.

My honesty didn’t close a deal.

But maybe he calls me when something actually changes.

Your time is finite. So is mine. Respecting that isn’t just good manners.. it’s good business.

Who’s the last professional that surprised you by telling you to do nothing?

05/09/2026

05/09/2026

05/06/2026

The Fernhill Cemetery rezoning recently passed.

I wrote about a 170-year-old cemetery in Saint John planning to sell land at its Rothesay Avenue entrance. No buyer. No listing. Just a rezoning application before council.

That vote happened.

Saint John Common Council approved it. The 2-acre parcel at 358 ½ Rothesay Avenue is now zoned Corridor Commercial instead of Park.

The land still isn't listed. No buyer is waiting. But the paper story is complete.

Park designation → Employment Area.
Park and Natural Area → Commercial Corridor. 8,360 square metres rezoned.

The owner of the granite business next door had written to council warning that new development could flood his property. Council voted to proceed.

It's a reminder that development moves in stages. An application. Public feedback. A council vote. Then the land sits, rezoned, waiting for what comes next.

Rothesay Avenue is one of the city's busiest commercial streets. A 2-acre parcel at a cemetery entrance is now zoned commercial.

What do you think ends up there?

05/05/2026

There’s a building I pass on my way through uptown Saint John fairly often, one of those older brick ones that’s been through several tenants, several renovations, and probably a few difficult years.

Seeing it on the list of businesses approved for Saint John’s new Community Resilience Fund this week made me think about how much invisible work goes into keeping a building, and a neighbourhood functional.

The city just approved a Community Resilience Fund:
• Up to $250K annually (2 years)
• First round: 13 approvals / ~$50K deployed
• Max $7,500 per applicant

Where’s the money going?

Surveillance systems
Lighting + fencing
Preventative security upgrades

At the same time, Saint John is spending $780K/year on a private security presence via GardaWorld in key areas like Uptown and Waterloo Village.

The fund just cleared its first round: 13 businesses and nonprofits receiving money toward cameras, lighting, and fencing. Not glamorous stuff. But it’s the kind of investment that makes a difference at street level for the people who work there, the neighbours nearby, and the owners trying to hold the line on properties that carry real community weight.

Moncton has a similar program running. These aren’t perfect solutions. But they’re honest acknowledgments that the environment has changed and that standing still isn’t a strategy.

What do you find more hopeful, just the funding or that we are all sitting in the same conversation about our city? That’s actually what a healthy neighbourhood looks like when it’s working through something hard together.

05/04/2026

Mass timber vs. concrete: Dartmouth developers push for a policy shift 🌲

A new feasibility study tied to a downtown Dartmouth site is putting numbers behind the mass timber debate:

12-storey, 199-unit concept (~200,000 sq. ft.)
Mass timber costs: ~$66M
Concrete equivalent: ~$57.3M (~8% cheaper)
Embodied carbon: ↓ 39% with timber
Build time: ~2 months faster

So why isn’t everyone building with mass timber?

Halifax’s Centre Plan effectively caps mid-rise buildings at 10 storeys
But mass timber is allowed up to 12 storeys under the National Building Code
Going above 10 storeys forces a different building form

Developers say they’d need to build a ~31-storey concrete tower just to match the density of a 12-storey mid-rise timber building on the same site.

That’s a policy problem, not a market one.

The upside potential:
Higher rents (projected +$50/unit premium)
Faster construction timelines
Lower carbon footprint
Differentiated product in a crowded rental market

We’re already seeing momentum:
9-storey Cove Zero Timber Lofts underway in Dartmouth
Proposed $215M mass timber plant in East Hants
Growing federal push for timber in housing

Maybe mass timber isn’t being held back by demand, it’s being held back by planning frameworks that haven’t caught up.

If policy allowed it, would developers actually absorb the 8% cost premium to build mass timber at scale or does this only work in a higher-rent environment?

CRE HousingCrisis Construction

05/02/2026

Most people don’t realize how rare it actually is to own a business.

Only 7.8% of Canadians do it.
Not 50%. Not 30%. 7.8.

If you’ve built something, even a small one, even a struggling one, you’re already doing something most people never will.

The stats back it up. Of the 1.22 million employer businesses in Canada, 97.8% are small businesses. The backbone of this country isn’t Bay Street. It’s the people signing cheques for under 100 employees.

Every year, roughly 100,000 new ones are born. And nearly as many close their doors.

It’s hard. It was always going to be hard.

But if you’re still standing that means something.

What’s the hardest part of owning a business that nobody warned you about?