'D-day' for northern Ontario small businesses who used government loans to survive COVID
CBC
Dozens of small businesses in northern Ontario that survived the COVID pandemic thanks to government loans are facing a repayment deadline on Thursday and struggling to come up with the tens of thousands of dollars they borrowed.
Gail Mills, who has run the Bermuda Tan salon in Timmins for 35 years, says she was "fortunate" to get a bank loan to help pay back the $40,000 she borrowed from the federal Canada Emergency Business Account or CEBA.
"This is D-day for a lot of people," she said.
"We knew we would have to pay it back, but a three-week deadline was a little bit of an insult."
The federal government had already extended the deadline twice and has said doing it again could cost taxpayers $900 million, but Mills says a longer repayment period or lower interest rates would be a "big help" since business has not completely recovered.
"It'll never be pre-COVID. I've come to terms with that. Life is different now," said Mills, adding she knows of several small businesses in Timmins that are closing for good this year.
Lola Jones, who sells clothes and home decor at Varied Treasure in North Bay, still isn't sure if she's going to make the deadline to pay back her $60,000 loan.
With a mortgage and other bills to pay, she said she had no choice, but to get a loan when her shop was "shut down flat" by COVID restrictions.
"It was basically our lifeline to survive," Jones said.
"I mean I know it was a loan and yes a loan you're entitled to pay back, but I just found it very unfair that business owners had to get a loan to survive, but everyone else, employees of a business when they were shut down they were able to live and receive money, but they don't have to pay it back."
She worries about repaying the loan at a time when "every customer that comes in is talking to me about how they're finding it hard to make their car payments."
At Thunder Bay clothing manufacturer Ungalli, owner Hailey Hollinsworth says this Christmas sales season was "quite rough" but "we had to use pretty much any profit that we made at Christmas to pay back this loan which now puts us in a rough spot starting the new year."
"I'm really grateful that we have found it, but it's definitely stressful," she said of the $60,000 loan needed during the pandemic for "everything from payroll to rent to our own pay."
Hollinsworth says post-COVID her business has shifted to online sales and more promotional clothing.
Kayla DeMong fought tears as she described the dire conditions on the front lines, pleading for more help from the province as staff at the harm reduction site she leads try to keep up with the recent spike in overdoses.
A B.C. woman who has been detained by U.S. immigration officials for 11 days, after trying to enter the country, will be released on Friday, according to her father.
Toronto is doubling the number of automated speed cameras on city streets.
Health Minister Adriana LaGrange is alleging the former CEO of Alberta Health Services was unwilling and unable to implement the government's plan to break up the health authority, became "infatuated" with her internal investigation into private surgical contracts and made "incendiary and inaccurate allegations about political intrigue and impropriety" before she was fired in January.
Hudson's Bay Company filed for creditor protection last week, saying it's struggling to pay landlords, vendors and employees — and it's a process that could lead to the sale or closure of Canada's oldest company.
Still sleepy from this week's time change?
RCMP say a man died while in police custody on Wednesday in downtown Yellowknife, and Alberta RCMP are investigating the incident.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and federal officials left an hours-long meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying they feel more positive about the Canada-U.S. trading relationship after weeks of bad blood and heated rhetoric.
The Alberta government wants to cut more than $400 million in the fees it pays to doctors, according to a confidential memo obtained by The Canadian Press.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says Canada's incoming prime minister needs to immediately and urgently negotiate a way to avoid China's planned tariffs on Canadian canola — even before an election call.
A judge has sentenced a 48-year-old man to life in prison for brutally stabbing his ex-wife and daughter to death in North York in 2022.
Ontario is seeing a massive surge in measles cases as an ongoing outbreak spreads in the province among mostly unvaccinated people.
Prince Edward Island's Affordable Housing Development Program fell short of its intended purpose, the province's Auditor General says.