Category: COVID-19

It has been 100 days since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the Federal Government was proceeding with a 75% wage subsidy program. The Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) was created and details began to be released in the days and weeks. In less than 100 days the government has received over 500,000 applications from […]

The Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) has been critically important to keeping businesses afloat. Like most COVID-19 Federal Government programs the initiative was launched not a minute too soon to impact jobs and in fact many layoffs commenced in or around March 15th. Once business owners gained confidence that they were eligible for CEWS some […]

Now that we are 10 weeks into the pandemic era, we are all speaking a new language. #Social distancing, #physical distancing, #CEWS, #CEBA, #CERB, and #RRRF are all trending. The Regional Relief and Recovery Fund (RRRF) is financial support for those that have been unable to access existing support measures. FedDev Ontario (the body charged […]

FedDev Ontario is one of Canada’s 6 Regional Development Agencies (RDA) charged with administering the Regional Relief and Recovery Fund (RRRF) covering the southern Ontario region (for clarity, that includes Ottawa). RRRF provides interest free loans to help support fixed operating costs of SMEs affected by COVID-19. The loans range from $40k – $500k depending […]

The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (aka CEWS) is a wage subsidy program available to eligible employers for a period of twelve weeks that provides a subsidy of 75% of the remuneration paid to each employee to a maximum of $847/week. The formula to assess eligibility is built around 4 key variables: 1. Time comparisons 2. […]

The Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (aka CEWS, the 75% wage subsidy) is now live! Applications are now being accepted to claim a refund of 75% of wages paid between March 18 – Apr 11th if you experienced a 15% revenue (or customer receipts) drop in March 2020 as compared to either a) March 2019 or […]

Updates for the qualification of COVID-19 Government Financial Support Wage Subsidy of 75% – April 7th. Problem #1: COVID-19 did not really hit us hard until mid-March, so even bricks and mortar businesses that were forced to close up only did so in the second half of the month. So a 30% drop in business […]

The Canada Business Credit Availability program provides $40k government guaranteed loans to small businesses and non-profits to help cover operating costs that cannot be deferred such as payroll, rent, utilities, insurance, debt payments and property tax. This will essentially work like a revolving line of credit for 2020. At the end of this year any […]

On Friday, March 27th the Prime Minister lifted spirits by agreeing with business owners that the 10% wage subsidy was just not enough and that he would be lifting it to 75%. I could practically hear cheering in the streets by many. Could this be the support required to keep businesses viable during this 100 […]