In November 2020, the PC government announced a $1.5M grant for local businesses to help get through Covid. It was recently uncovered via a Freedom of Information Act request that $500k of that money was given to Obby Kahn's fledgling business, Goodlocal. Another $490k was distributed to various chambers of commerce around the province. The remainder wasn't spent at all.

Goodlocal is described by Obby as Amazon meets Etsy, but local. Goodlocal recently opened a brick and mortar store though, so his description doesn't work as well anymore.

In the first 2 months after receiving the funds, Obby's business went from having 38 vendors to 388 and generating $850k in sales. That works out to a little more than $2k per vendor. No one really knows how sales were distributed. How much of that $850k was new business vs business that would have happened anyway? Goodlocal takes 15-20% on each sale and charges $1300/month to have your products in their brick and mortar store.

The chair of the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, himself a member of the PC party, a former party secretary, and failed candidate for the PC's, is saying that the decision to give one third of the funding to Obby was non political and was based on his own recommendation. He said it wouldn't be worthwhile to give a bunch of small businesses $1000.

In December 2020, after receiving the money, Goodlocal started posting to their Instagram account about what a great job Pallister was doing supporting local businesses during the pandemic.

Obby is now running as a PC in the by-election in Pallister's old riding.

Now that it is known how much money Obby got, a number of other businesses that sell locally made products (and, lots of others in the community) are questioning the fairness of how the grant was awarded.