West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country MP Patrick Weiler has committed to weekly briefings with the Sunshine Coast business community as the impact of measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, many of which have led to businesses closing down or scaling back their operations, continues.
On March 30, a few hours before the conference call organized by the Sechelt and District Chamber of Commerce, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that all businesses would now be eligible for a wage subsidy, which the week before had been increased to 75 per cent.
On the call Weiler faced the expected questions about the mechanics of applying for the federal programs, such as how a business is expected to prove it has experienced a 30 per cent drop in revenue, wait times to talk to Service Canada, online applications, and how long it will take to actually see the first payments.
One of the more pointed questions put to Weiler was tied to the fact many of the programs are in the form of loans or deferrals of certain payments.
“Are these programs giving business false hope,” the questioner asked, seeing as many businesses might not be able to recover fast enough to make the repayments and would have to fold anyway.
“Our main focus is making sure we can support businesses through this,” Weiler responded. “It won’t be that every single business is going to get through this, but we want to be able give businesses a chance … so that’s really what our measures are made to do, keeping in mind that’s going to be an inevitable fact.”
Another questioner was worried about the surge in government spending driving up the national debt and wanted to know “if it might not be more equitable for citizens to suffer somewhat through this crisis and not burden future generations in this way.”
“We need to both look at the cost of what we’re doing right now and the cost of not doing what we’re doing right now,” said Weiler. “It is something that’s going to add a lot to the debt, but it’s what governments have to do to ensure that we’re going to be able to rebound from this.”
Weiler said Canada’s measures are in line with what’s being done around the world.
“Key to all this decision making is making sure that we’re able to get out of this and that we don’t dig ourselves through austerity into a bigger hole.”
Sunshine Coast residents will soon get a better idea of the affects of COVID-19 on local businesses.
The Sunshine Coast Regional Economic Development Organization (SCREDO) has been conducting a business impact survey, looking to find out the level of concern from local entrepreneurs and get answers to questions like whether they’ve already laid off staff or plan to, whether they’ll have trouble making rent or mortgage payments and the percentage drop in revenue they’ve experienced.
A similar survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), which has been polling small business owners on a weekly basis, found 77 per cent of the 9,678 respondents have fully or partially closed their businesses, and one third of those are unsure if they’ll be able to reopen.
The latest CFIB survey, released March 30, also found that 57 per cent of the business owners polled have seen “significant” declines in sales and 50 per cent have laid off all or some of their staff while 28 per cent reduced their workers’ hours.
Twenty-three per cent of the CFIB survey’s respondents said they did not expect to be able to meet their April rent or mortgage obligations.
