Federal Help ‘Woefully Inadequate’ For Many N.S. Businesses
HALIFAX — Some Nova Scotia businesses say new COVID-19 relief measures won’t do much to save their employees’ jobs.
Yesterday, the federal government announced $82-billion worth of programs and tax deferrals designed to cushion the economic blow of the global coronavirus pandemic.
One of the main tools was a 10 percent wage subsidy Prime Minister Trudeau said “will encourage employers to keep staff on the payroll during these uncertain times.”
But many small business owners say that’s not going to happen.
Louis-Philippe Gauthier is the director of provincial affairs for New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
He says the 10 percent wage subsidy is “woefully inadequate considering the magnitude of impact that this crisis is having” on small businesses.
“The reality is many, many, many, many businesses have already laid off their staff. And for those businesses that have already laid off their staff this wage subsidy is no help,” Gauthier said.
A perfect example is Halifax’s Legendary Hospitality Group, which owns the Stubborn Goat, Durty Nelly’s, and several other Halifax restaurants that have all closed because of concerns surrounding COVID-19.
Geir Simensen, one of Legendary’s co-owners, says he and his partners were forced to lay off 160 people yesterday. Simensen says it was incredibly tough to put so many people out of work but that he can’t pay them if he doesn’t have any revenue.
Getting a small fraction of wages back from the government, he says, won’t make any difference.
“It’s like, 10 percent, what am I going to do with that?” he asks. “Someone who makes 20 bucks an hour, I can’t say to them, ‘you know what just keep working and I’ll give you two bucks an hour.’”
“I recognize that it’s a great effort made, however, I still have to come up with 90 percent and there’s nobody walking through my door.”
It’s tough, Simensen says, because most business owners will do whatever they can to keep their people working.
“We’re just coming off January, February, March: our shitty months in the restaurant industry,” he explains. “All you do is try not to lose too much of the money you made the summer before. So you’re just trying to hang onto every dollar, keep as many people employed as you can, even when you’re running way too high labour cost.”
Lisa Gaetz, who owns a small contracting business in Nova Scotia, agrees. Like any business owner, she tries hard to take care of her employees but says when you’re not operating it’s almost impossible.
“You don’t know what it’s like when you’re a small company trying to get on your feet, I mean, your money comes in and your money goes right back out. And we pay taxes up the ying-yang, and we have insurance on this, and we’ve got to have all these insurances in place,” she says.
“Where does the money come from if I’m not building houses?” she asks.
That’s exactly why Gauthier says the federal government needs to do more.
“Other countries have stepped up in a much more significant way than what the Canadian government,” he says. “A 10 percent wage subsidy is barely enough for business owners to consider the headache and the red tape of applying.”
Gauthier added that other programs the government announced could prove to be more helpful, but that “the question will be the speed of delivery and the capacity of government to put them in place in an extremely fast manner.”