The Canada Recovery Hiring Program will provide eligible employers with a subsidy of up to 50% of incremental payroll costs between June 6, 2021 and Nov 20, 2021

Is my company eligible?  Eligibility of a company is pretty much the same as for CEWS (Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy).  So if you were eligible for CEWS than you are likely eligible for this one too.

Is my revenue drop eligible?  Hats off to CRA using the methodology of CEWS for this subsidy as well.  In other words you are either comparing year over year differences or the alternate approach of comparing to Jan/Feb 2020.  The required revenue drop is 0% for Period 17 and then 10% for subsequent periods. 

Which employees are eligible?   The focus of this subsidy is on incremental increases in remuneration costs as compared to remuneration paid from March 14 to April 10, 2021.  So if your payroll was $50k during that period and for Period 17 it was $75k, the difference that is eligible for the subsidy would be $25k.

What is the rate?  The subsidy rate is 50% for June, July and August and then drops by 10% per month for the following 3 months ending November at 20%.  For clarity, this rate is not scaled based on your revenue decline. In other words you qualify for the flat rate or you don’t.

Can you claim both?  No, but you do get to select the preferred program while CEWS is still in play.  So you’ll need to run the numbers under either program and determine the better subsidy.  (FYI – The CEWS max subsidy will be dropping from 75% in P17 reaching 20% by P20 when the program retires on Sept 25th.)

For more information on this program click here.