As of Saturday, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy will be no more.
Replacing them will be the Tourism and Hospitality Recovery Program that will give businesses in those industries a subsidy of up to 75 percent.
For other businesses suffering losses from the pandemic the Hardest-Hit Business Recovery Program will provide funding up to 50-percent.
However, Prince George Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Corrigall believes the expiring programs could have been extended another month.
“But, what is more, challenging around this is that they could have and they (Ottawa) had the capacity to within the current legislation extend those programs through to November 20th, what that would have resulted in as a lot better level of engagement.”
Corrigall adds each province is experiencing the pandemic differently but a labour shortage in BC is driving a lot of the issues.
“Without an opportunity to address labour concerns, we need to have a better understanding of what these supports look like and a better level of engagement with government.”
“We have come off a federal election and heard nothing from a policy perspective. In fact, they are not even sitting until the end of November and then we get an announcement during the middle of Small Business Week that small business supports are either changing or leaving.”
Vista Radio asked Corrigall was upset by the timing of this announcement where Parliament is not sitting in the House of Commons for another month when small businesses need them the most – he responded with an emphatic yes.
“We are all experiencing challenges in different ways whether that be through a labour shortage or adjustments to customers behaviours. Whatever that might look like, people have spoken, we have had a federal election and it’s time to get to work and sitting and discussing these issues in an open and transparent manner.”
Corrigall expressed his disappointment with the stop and start pace of the federal government, which isn’t going to let up anytime soon.
“And it’s frustrating to think they are probably not going to be there for very long until they rise for a couple of months for the holidays as well. These are issues that impact Canadians from coast to coast to coast and if our federal government isn’t prepared to sit down and talk about and debate these amongst their colleagues, we have a fundamental challenge ahead of us.”
Since the feds are not sitting in the House of Commons right now, these programs will expire on November 20th with the intent of proposing legislation to extend them into the spring (May 7th).
In addition, Canada’s Recovery Benefit will also wind down and be replaced by the Worker Lockdown program.
It will provide $300 a week to people put out of work because of lockdowns.