Business View Magazine - July 2023

261 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 7 MUSKOKA AI RPORT “We are hoping to get that back. When that will happen we don’t know. We’re still dealing with after-effects of COVID. We call it post-COVID effects. You see that all over the airline industry. The dust has not settled yet. You see that with airlines canceling flights and rerouting. We are in contact with the aviation industry out there, saying, ‘Hey, we are open for business here.’ So once we get that scheduled service back in here, and it is going to happen. It’s just a matter of when.” Lehman extolled the airport’s staffers and O’Connor’s leadership. “There’s no greater champions for the airport as a location to do business,” Lehman said, “so it’s easy for us, because we can bring people to the facility, introduce them to other people they’ll be working with, and I think that’s a real competitive advantage for airports like Muskoka. When we’re talking to a business about establishing themselves or growing at the airport, they are dealing with the people they will deal with directly day in and day out. The district wishes to give the airport more ability and agility to work with businesses and to meet their needs. We are moving towards what’s called a municipal services corporation to the airport, which actually will allow even more agility for the airport in terms of what it’s able to control and how it’s able to work with a business to meet their needs at the airport.” “It was really interesting, what happened during COVID,” he added. “We actually saw an influx of people into Muskoka, not the opposite. What you had in Ontario during COVID were people who felt safer, more comfortable living in Muskoka if they had the option to do that. The district actually saw a substantial increase in our permanent population during COVID.” However, Lehman noted, there was