Don’t stop federal COVID-19 benefits, businesses say as expiration nears

On Oct. 23, benefits such as the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy and Lockdown Support will expire.

Canada’s COVID-19 wage subsidy has been a lifeline for Rina Camarra and Richard Vanderlubbe.

Camarra, manager of Mastro’s Restaurant in Toronto, and Vanderlubbe, president of tripcentral.ca, both told Global News their businesses have relied on it during this 19-month-long pandemic.

“It’s not an easy task for us to run a business nowadays,” Camarra said.

“It helps us a lot because otherwise we just wouldn’t be able to keep the staff on if we had to cover that all ourselves. What we take in is not enough.”

However, come October, the wage subsidy will expire along with a slew of other federal COVID-19 supports, which concerns Vanderlubbe.

Without that benefit, his travel agency wouldn’t have been able to retain employees and maintain their systems.

“That allowed us to maintain a level of service to customers to process and answer questions,” he said.

“Without that wage subsidy, the level of service would have been near zero.”