West Vacouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country MP Patrick Weiler met Thursday with local business leaders to answer questions about federal support during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The meeting, as almost all meetings do now, took place remotely with participants joining in a video conference arranged by the Sechelt and District Chamber of Commerce.
“This really is an unprecedented event that we’re dealing with right now and I’ve been really impressed and encouraged to see the response of people in the community,” said Weiler to open the March 19 session, before talking about the $27 billion in direct support for workers and business announced by the Trudeau government earlier in the week. “Whether you’re self-employed, a small business owner or entrepreneur, you shouldn’t have to worry about losing your business or your job at this time.”
The federal measures include eliminating the payroll tax to give a 10 per cent wage subsidy to small businesses, helping with cash flow by deferring tax payments until Aug. 31, increasing the credit available through the Business Development Bank (BDC), an emergency care benefit of up to $900 biweekly for up to 15 weeks for self-employed people who are not eligible for EI benefits, and a cut in interest rates to increase the lending capacity of banks and other financial institutions.
“A program that most people haven’t really used much yet is the work sharing program,” Weiler added. “This is going to help businesses with wages so they don’t have to lay people off right way.”
Weiler said more support programs are coming, including programs targeted at “particularly affected sectors” such as tourism and hospitality.
Weiler said his advice for people running small or mid-sized enterprises is to start by reaching out to their banks to take advantage of lines of credit that BDC will “backstop.”
When asked about the timeline for actually having the support programs “in place and functional,” Weiler said some programs, like mortgage deferrals, are available now, while others, like EI changes and the emergency care benefit to the self-employed, gig economy workers and business owners will need to wait for legislation to pass, which will require an emergency session.
“The timelines we’re looking at for those is two to three weeks … because we need to pass it in the House of Commons and it needs to go through the Senate and it needs to get royal assent and we need to prepare our systems for likely receiving millions of requests,” he said, adding that all the involved ministries are working closely together including the new Digital Government Ministry.
Chamber chair John Henderson said the 10 per cent wage subsidy through the payroll tax may not been large enough. “The issue is really that 10 per cent isn’t enough to change the reality that some employers will have to lay people off. If it was significantly higher it might help keep people employed. I think that’s something that many of our members would agree with,” Henderson said.
Weiler’s response was that program is one that can be implemented right away, but bigger subsidies would need legislation.
“For businesses, especially restaurants, tourism, the hospitality industry – they’re going to be facing layoffs. For some businesses it can create the difference between somebody on payroll or not,” Weiler said. He also said the hope is it will provide a cushion for businesses that can have employees work from home, but that might suffer a drop in revenue as a result.
Among the questions from Chamber members was one from a local restaurant owner concerned that if they changed the way they do business, such as switching to take-out only, they might get less support than they would by simply shutting down.
“If you do support the community by providing take-out and delivery is that a zero-sum game for the owner?… Will their support payment go down commensurate to what they earn?” said Henderson, who read the restaurateur’s emailed question
“It’s really important that we have businesses stay open to be able to get food to people, it’s going to be a major challenge over the next little while,” said Weiler.
“We don’t want people to be out of pocket and we don’t want businesses to be closed that are giving an essential service.”
