As I'm sure everyone knows, these have been incredibly difficult times for small and medium-sized firms across the country. I've spent 26 years working with and for small businesses and have never seen anything like this. This challenge started with small and medium-sized firms. With these economic circumstances and challenges, unlike previous recessions or economic turmoil which typically starts with large companies and trickles down to smaller companies, it has been the reverse, starting with main street and moving its way up to Bay Street.
We at CFIB have been absolutely flooded with calls from small business owners. Many of them are almost paralyzed as to what they should do next. We typically receive about 50 calls per day from small business owners and that's now up to 800. Just last week alone, we had five small business owners talking to us about suicide. That is how dark this has quickly become for so many small business owners who, of course, we all know have an incredible responsibility on their shoulders to help not only their families who rely on the business for their source of income, but also the families of their employees. I can't underscore enough just how dark and dangerous these days are for so many small business owners.
I provided the committee with a deck and slide 3 of that deck shows some brand new data that we've collected at CFIB. We've now done four surveys, one each weekend, of the impact this is having on small firms. One thing I think the committee should know is that only about 20% of Canadian small and medium-sized firms remain open; 80% of small companies are either fully closed or largely closed as a result of trying to do their part to slow the curve. Much of that, of course, has been ordered by government.
Cash flow is a major concern for small businesses, and their long-term business finances are also worries. On slide 5 we share that 30% of businesses right now do not have the cash flow necessary to pay even their April bills, let alone the bills that are going to be coming forward in the months ahead.
I will say that there have been a variety of helpful programs that have been established. I do wish that these programs had started earlier. We have been, of course, pushing and pleading for some further support. The largest concern for small business owners right now, the number one cost, is wages and we've lost some ground. Many layoffs have happened as a result of the fact that there haven't been programs in place to support wages at a much earlier stage. That 10% subsidy that was implemented a few weeks ago is a helpful measure, no doubt, but it took us some time to get to the 75% figure, and even more time to get the details right. We still don't have the program out there.
I say that knowing that there are tons of civil servants and political leaders who have been working tirelessly to try to put these measures together and are doing two years of work in two days or two weeks. However, a lot of this is now too late for businesses, and the prospect of their rolling back some of the layoffs is limited.
We asked our members about the Canadian emergency wage subsidy. This was done this past weekend before the additional details that were rolled out just a day or two ago. About 30% of small businesses said this CEWS would help them, but 36% of our members said no, they would not be helped by it. Others were unsure.
How will the Canadian emergency wage subsidy help small businesses? The largest group said that it would help them retain staff who are still on their payroll. That was 44%. A third of our members said that it would help them retain all of the staff who are on their payroll. Fewer said that they would be able to recall staff as a result.
In terms of the roadblocks, though, to those businesses that are not going to be helped by the emergency wage subsidy, the largest group said it was just too late. They've already done their layoffs and now reversing everything would be too complicated even if they did qualify. The next largest group, 30%, said they just can't afford to wait up to six weeks to get the money. Another 21% said they worry that it would be too difficult to demonstrate the 30% test. Many of them have seen revenues drop much more than that, but the 30% test has been quite a blunt one for many firms and they're just not sure that they're going to have the evidence to provide the CRA to make sure that they qualify. Then still others know that they're not going to qualify because their sales drop has been less than 30%.
We're pleased to see other measures being put in place, such as emergency business accounts, but all of these programs have major design challenges. We're trying in real time to iron some of them out. In the case of the Canadian emergency business account, unfortunately the threshold of $50,000 to $1 million does cut out a large number of microsized businesses, as well as some that have a million dollars in payroll, such as large restaurants. We're urging government to expand and change some of these programs to allow more businesses to access them.
Our preferred option, of course, with the Canada emergency wage subsidy, is eliminating the 30% test altogether, particularly for small and medium-sized firms, and making it more akin to the British program that allows you to enter without additional paperwork or evidence to be demonstrated.
I'll cut my comments there. I have a lot of data on all of the major programs. We're grateful to the government for the steps that have been taken to date and grateful to the opposition parties for suggesting helpful amendments, and we're willing to work side by side with all parties to improve these programs to support some of the businesses that are hanging on by their fingernails.
Thanks so much.