‘TOO LATE’: Very few businesses applied for Trudeau government’s emergency wage subsidy

Bill Morneau's Finance Department are planning to expand this wage subsidy—which allows the government to pay for a certain percentage of employees salaries—to include private schools, newspapers and First Nations corporations.

Despite this expansion, the Department of Finance has predicted that it will not increase the cost of the program.

"The expected costs of the temporary wage subsidy are not expected to increase," wrote the department. "It is expected the expanded list of eligible employers will not exceed the original anticipated cost of $73 billion."

So far, it is unclear why so few businesses subscribed to this program. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said that they "think they made a sincere effort to cost this program but delivered it so late the world had shifted."

"Many small businesses told us they intended to use the program, but it came too late for them," they added.

The sheer lack of interest for this program is astonishing. Initially, the Trudeau government saw the pandemic wage subsidy as the cornerstone of their lockdown policy, however, $7.9 billion of the allocated $73 billion was ever used.

The wage subsidy, it seems, was simply introduced too late for many businesses to make use of the program. Many businesses already laid off staff or have had to face bankruptcy—thereby disqualifying them from this program.

Canadian Federation of Independent Business said that "one of the challenges the government has had is a profound misunderstanding of how small business works."

"The government had this fantasy employers forced to close their stores would immediately rehire staff after going through the agony of laying them off. They just didn’t get that," they concluded.