‘Our survival is really in jeopardy’: B.C. restaurants fear changes to COVID-19 subsidies
Global News
Big changes to Canada's COVID-19 subsidies for businesses have some smaller B.C. restaurants worried.
Big changes to Canada’s COVID-19 subsidies for businesses have some smaller B.C. restaurants worried.
“Our restaurant relies a lot on tourists and offices, we’re a lunch and breakfast restaurant in the downtown office core, neither of those two drivers have really come back for us,” Matthew Senecal, owner of the Birds and the Beets in Vancouver’s Gastown told Global News.
“Our sales are still quite a bit down from what they were in 2019 and what they need to be for us to be a sustainable, viable restaurant.”
The federal government has eliminated the long-running Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS), and replaced them with two new programs more narrowly targeted at the hardest-hit businesses and the tourism and hospitality sector.
Under the new Tourism and Hospitality Recovery Program, restaurants can get a wage and rent subsidy of up to 75 per cent — but must be able to show monthly revenue losses averaging 40 per cent along with a 40 per cent loss in the current month.
“The problem with the new (program) is the 40 per cent threshold. We have many restaurants that are losing sales between 20 and 40 per cent, and with this new program they’re eligible for nothing, and that could be a death sentence for many of those restaurants,” said Mark von Schellwitz, Restaurants Canada’s vice-president of western Canada.
“If you’re down 39 per cent you get no subsidy.”
Von Schellwitz said as many as 80 per cent of Canadian restaurants are currently losing money or just breaking even, and that is with the benefit of government supports.
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