Last week, with the throne speech the federal government revealed the path it wishes to follow to lead the country through COVID-19 economic recovery.

“There are sectors of the economy that have been hard hit such as hospitality and the performing arts, so we were glad to hear supports coming to those industries,” said Stuart Harrison, President & CEO, Peterborough Chamber of Commerce.  “We also think of broadband as critical infrastructure to people doing business so it was positive to see the acceleration of the Universal Broadband Fund.”

Here are a few more details:

• Extend the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) through to summer 2021
• Create one million jobs to return employment to pre-COVID levels
• Use a range of tools including direct investments in the social sector and infrastructure, immediate training to quickly skill up workers, and incentives for employers to hire and retain workers
• Scale up the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, to provide more paid work experiences next year for young Canadians
• Expand the Canada Emergency Business Account to help businesses with fixed costs
• Improve the Business Credit Availability Program
• Introduce further support for industries that have been the hardest hit, including travel and tourism, hospitality, and cultural industries like the performing arts
• Create an Action Plan for Women in the Economy to help more women get back into the workforce

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) also echoed many of our initial sentiments including the desire to learn more details about the various programs for business and workforce.

OCC President & CEO Rocco Rossi released the following statement in reaction to the federal government’s Speech from the Throne.

"Businesses across the province have been hard hit by the pandemic. In the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic, it is difficult for Canadians to look beyond confronting the immediate effects of COVID-19. However, even as we continue supporting each other today, we must also start planning how our communities and economy can emerge stronger.

We are not out of the woods yet, and must be careful when planning for new, permanent programs when we still have considerable uncertainty to navigate. 
The OCC is also concerned that commercial rent assistance was noticeably absent from the speech, especially considering the established need for improvements to the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program.

The speech indicates unprecedented spending from the federal government.  We will need strong
economic growth to generate revenues to pay for these investments, as austerity measures and tax increases are not the paths to recovery. Instead, there should be a focus on funding the key determinants
of growth: education and training, R&D and innovation, and infrastructure (particularly broadband internet).”

And here is a portion of the release from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce President & CEO, Hon. Perrin Beatty, who also offered areas for improvement:
“What we need is more than a patchwork of disconnected initiatives. We must have a national strategy to manage and defeat the virus.

The government also has other opportunities to help businesses grow and hire. We had hoped for a pledge to:

• remove costly regulatory processes that impede investment and don’t serve the public interest
• simplify the tax system and encourage Canadian businesses to invest at home create policies that
• enable businesses to unleash private investment, in turn accelerating the recovery
• invest in infrastructure that includes trade-enabling projects like ports, roads and rail to help get our products to international markets

Finally, the Canadian Chamber has significant concerns about the debt levels that Canadians will be burdened with for decades to come, without a plan as yet for how to pay for it. Making sure Canadians were supported during the pandemic was necessary and right, but we must move from an economy that is based on subsidies to one where families and businesses can be self-sufficient again and where we don’t burden future generations with a crushing debt load.

[The] speech was a beginning, but much more needs to be done to help the more than one million Canadians who lost their jobs get safely back to work. The most direct and efficient route to do so is to enable the only group that can create jobs: Canadian businesses.”

Next week chambers of commerce and boards of trade across Ontario will be gathering virtually to debate just under 50 policy resolutions.

In a world without COVID-19, this process would have happened in person in one of our fine Ontario
communities.  As delegates to the Annual General Meeting we would have debated on the floor and taken our dollars into the community in a series of networking events.

This week of September is also usually the Canadian Chamber AGM, which will now happen virtually at the end of October.

Even though the policy debates are now online, this does not diminish the importance of the process or the discussion.  In fact, through the lens of COVID-19 Economic Recovery, many of these resolutions gain in relevance and significance.

The Peterborough Chamber of Commerce is submitting three resolutions for consideration.

The first encourages more opportunities for the spirit sector of the alcohol and beverage industry.  With many distilleries jumping up to make hand sanitizer we’ve gotten to know this industry on a deeper level and some of the barriers such as taxes, product placement in the LCBO, and distribution and sales
opportunities, that are holding these businesses back from achieving their full potential.   

The second resolution asks the province to develop a mechanism that allows for multiple municipalities who have invested in a regionally significant project to account for jobs created when reporting to
government.  The Peterborough Chamber of Commerce believes this change of view on reporting
requirements would encourage more regional collaboration, which in turn would be to the benefit of all communities involved.  There are many collaborations that cross geographical boundaries in the conservation and transit authority space, but not many in the economic development space.

The third resolution is on data and building a data dashboard that Ontario businesses and residents can access.  This dashboard would be able to merge and release data sets upon request for businesses and Ontarians. The idea is that residents and businesses can be even more informed in their decision making.  From a business perspective we are opening ourselves up further to more ingenuity and entrepreneurship with access to more information in a timely and relevant format.

Other resolution topics to be debated and voted on include further planning on smart cities and digital
transformations, provincial procurement reform, resolving the provincial housing crisis to support economic growth, and improving the skilled trades in secondary schools.

Many of these resolutions are aimed at community betterment and ensuring businesses and
municipalities have the tools in place to ensure sustainable economic growth in Ontario’s urban and rural areas.

The COVID-19 crisis is having a disproportionate economic impact on women. There are several reasons for this. First, temporary business shutdowns and layoffs during the state of emergency most severely affected occupations and sectors that predominantly employ women. Second, these sectors are those in which women entrepreneurs are more likely to operate, and their businesses tend to be newer, smaller, and less well-financed than those owned by men. Third, restrictions on schools and paid child care facilities have shifted additional hours of unpaid family care onto parents, and this work has largely been taken up by mothers. Fourth, while women are dominating the frontline responses to the COVID pandemic, they have not been included in the planning for recovery.

The pandemic has also exacerbated existing inequality and has been especially challenging for certain groups of women, including racialized women, Indigenous women, single mothers, low-income women, immigrant women, women with disabilities, and those living in rural areas.

The long-term impacts of COVID-19 on women in the workforce remain unknown. However, with women’s labour force participation at a record low, decades of progress towards gender equality are at stake. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) strongly believes this is not only a watershed moment for women but for Ontario’s economy and society more broadly, as women’s participation in the labour market is a precondition to its fulsome economic recovery and prosperity.

This brief lays out a path to Ontario’s “she-covery” by examining data on the gendered labour market impacts of the pandemic and offering policy solutions to confront both immediate and longer-term challenges. Throughout this, an intersectional lens is essential to ensure no women are left behind.

The critical findings include:

• Leadership and accountability begin with a commitment from stakeholders to set collective targets, reward diversity, include women in decision-making bodies, and apply a gender and diversity lens to their strategies, policies, and programs for recovery.
• Child care requires a short-term strategy to weather the pandemic and longer-term, system-wide reforms to improve accessibility and affordability.
• Workforce development initiatives should focus on defining critical skills, accelerating women’s reskilling, and ensuring their skills are utilized – with a focus on increasing their participation in skilled trade, technology, and engineering roles in fast-growing sectors.
• Entrepreneurship should be understood as a pathway to economic growth, and an inclusive ecosystem is critical to supporting women entrepreneurs.
• Flexible work arrangements are one way to level the playing field for women and improve organizational outcomes.

​The title of our brief is inspired by Canadian economist Armine Yalnizyan, who said about the pandemic, “No recovery without a she-covery.”   

The federal government has recently announced updates on four major programs for businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.   

1. Canada Emergency Business Account
2. Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance Program
3. Business Credit Availability Program
4. Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy

1. Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA)
This $55 billion program provides interest-free loans of up to $40,000 to small businesses and not-for-profits.

Repaying the balance of the loan on or before December 31, 2022 will result in loan forgiveness of 25 percent (up to $10,000).

What’s New:

• The program has been extended to October 31st, 2020
• It is now open to small firms without business accounts

CEBA Stats:

• Almost 290,000 Ontario businesses have received a CEBA loan
• $11.5 + million in approved funding
• Ontario represents 40% of the loans approved across Canada

Thank you to all who participated in #CanadaUnited this past weekend.  The Peterborough Chamber of Commerce has been proud to support the campaign and combine it with our #LoveLocalPtbo campaign.

Supporting local is the backbone of a recovery from the impacts of COVID-19.

Part of the campaign was to build a Small Business Relief Fund.  Here are the details of the fund:
The Canada United Small Business Relief Fund is managed by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the national Chamber network in support of other chambers and partners to help small Canadian businesses with their recovery efforts as a result of COVID-19.

If awarded, a relief grant can be used for any of the following activities:

• Purchasing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as masks, face shields, and latex gloves.
• Renovating physical space to adhere to local, Provincial or Federal reopening guidelines.
• Developing or improving e-commerce capabilities for your business.

Eligibility
Eligibility criteria includes:

• One application per ownership group
• Applicants do not need to be a member of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) to qualify
• Small to medium-sized (SME) companies from all sectors and all regions of Canada
• For greater clarity, both For-Profit and Not-For-Profit organizations are eligible to apply but Government organizations, municipalities, charities and the chamber of commerce network are not eligible to apply
• Be incorporated, or operating as a sole proprietor, in Canada as of March 1, 2020
• No more than 75 employees
• Have minimum annual sales of $200,000 and not more than $3,000,000
• Have $1,000,000 of commercial general liability insurance
• Not receiving any other contributions from public funds towards the specific activities contained in the funding application
• Be in full compliance with all applicable government laws, rules, regulations, guidelines and other legally binding measures (Laws)
• Be in operation after September 1, 2020 (grant recipients must sign a declaration included in the approval letter to confirm)
• Must attach all necessary invoices and receipts with the application.
• Failure to do so will result in automatic disqualification.
• Must submit one of the following documents (dated prior to March 1, 2020):
• Proof of business registration:
• Sales tax (GST/HST) registration
• Recent sales tax (GST/HST) filing

FAQs on the Canada United Small Business Relief Fund
Q: I am a franchisee can I apply to the program?
A: Yes, individual franchisee owners can apply.


Q: What counts as an eligible renovation?
A: Renovations are defined as any alterations, temporary or permanent, made to your business specifically to reduce the risk of customers or staff contracting the novel coronavirus, referred to as COVID-19.  These can include:

• The building or purchase of physical barriers
• The creation of signage or floor markers
• The building or purchase of sanitizing stations
• The building or purchase of materials used to create a structure to facilitate curbside pickup or contactless payment, or to otherwise move aspects of your business outside 
• The alteration of a building’s windows and doors
• The installation of touchless devices such as doors or waste containers
• Third party labour costs associated with any of the above, provided there is no conflict of interest with such third party

Q: If I am a sole proprietor can I apply?
A: Yes, sole proprietorships are eligible to apply.

Applications are open.