Over two weeks after launch, Ottawa's wage subsidy failing to attract businesses as expected

shockedcanadian

Diamond Member
Aug 6, 2012
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The Canadian economy is in for a massive decline, potentially a crash of epic proportions. We were getting crushed beforehand, begging for talented citizens to come to Canada as our best exit stage left (usually Cali or Texas tbh). Now, we are will be begging for any small business to stay afloat as the thieves in the system happily celebrated a race to the bottom with China...oops. Miscalculation.

America should take our best and brightest when the time comes, this is a VERY bad sign for our future, we were already "growing" at an anemic rate before this virus (less than 1%, and that was probably generous) and much of this fake growth was just government debt to jobs.

The covert apparatus has slowly dried up our countries talent, civil liberties and competitiveness, replaced with nepotism and low performing family members of the wannabe Stasi. Now the virus exposes it all in short order.

Here is the key sentence that tells everyone what is to come:

"over two weeks after it launched, it’s attracted barely 13 per cent of the expected number of applicants." They expected a million but had less than 150,000 applicants. Remember, this is FREE money. They only had to agree to rehire.

What this says to me is that the rest of the businesses will either not be rehiring some, or all of their employees when we re-open. It also means many more will close forever, and/or try and operate on a skeleton crew until the economy recovers...and it may not recover at anywhere near our already low performing status for a very long time.

Over two weeks after launch, Ottawa's wage subsidy failing to attract businesses as expected


OTTAWA – The Trudeau government’s wage subsidy was supposed to be Ottawa’s flagship aid package to help Canadians and businesses get through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. But over two weeks after it launched, it’s attracted barely 13 per cent of the expected number of applicants.

“Clearly, fewer people are on Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy than the government expected when they set it up six weeks ago, whereas more are on the Canada Emergency Response Benefit than they expected,” stated Kevin Milligan, professor of economics at the University of British Columbia.

Announced nearly two months ago, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) covers 75 per cent of eligible employers’ payrolls — up to a weekly maximum of $847 per employee — for up to 12 weeks between March 15 and June 6.

Just over two weeks after the program’s launch, the numbers seem disappointing.

According to data released Tuesday evening by the Canada Revenue Agency, the government has received 132,481 applications, of which all but 9,000 have been processed and approved. CEWS has paid out a total of $3.36 billion in subsidies to nearly 1.7 million employees.

That’s well under the expected 1 million applications that the government announced when the program was launched. Ottawa also budgeted $73 billion for the program.

Now, it’s increasingly unlikely that anywhere near that amount of applications arrive or subsidies are doled out before the program hits its current expiration date.

On the other hand, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), which pays out a monthly $2,000 for up to four months to those who lost their job because of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been way more popular than the government planned.

Instead of the expected four million recipients, nearly eight million Canadians applied for the benefit as of May 10.

“It’s pretty clear to me that the balance of those going to CERB instead of CEWS is different than the government expected. Quite a bit different, in fact. They’re not going to get close to that $73 billion budget, whereas they’re overspending on the CERB,” Milligan analyzed.
 

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