Status of Women Committee on Feb. 15th, 2024

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

It works better here when there's only one man out of nine women at the table—and it's Brad. That's why the committee works so well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much, Marc.

I would like to also welcome Brad. It is nice to have a little bit of a change in here, but not too often.

I would now like to pass it over, for the next six minutes, to Andréanne.

Andréanne Larouche, you have six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Minister, thank you very much for being here with us today.

This study revealed the hardships that women experience. It is neither simple nor easy. I’d like to talk about the deadline for repaying the Canada Emergency Business Account, or CEBA, and the consequences it may have.

As you know, the Bloc Québécois put tremendous emphasis on this file. We would have liked to see another extension of the January 18 deadline. We are seeing the consequences now. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, or CFIB, reacted this week to the issue of businesses in trouble. The file is not closed, Minister.

I would therefore like to know about the impact of the CEBA repayment deadline on entrepreneurs. Did you measure the impact? We are realizing that many of these struggling small businesses are women-owned.

I will give you an example, but first I would like to know if you measured the consequences that the CEBA repayment deadline will have on women-owned businesses.

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you for the question.

The same question was asked of Mrs. Clare Barnett in the previous committee. She had also indicated she's been seeing a lot of support since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our business in helping support small businesses.... I mean, we all experienced it. Everything locked down, everything closed and small businesses were in a pickle. They were having some challenges.

We provided them with the CEBA loans. We've supported close to 900,000 small businesses across the country.

For those deadlines you're talking about, the first deadline was December 31, 2022. At that time, small business entrepreneurs needed help and an extension, so we provided that extension. This extension that we provided them gave them more time to be able to make decisions.

It wasn't a hard date. We provided three options for entrepreneurs, to help make it more flexible and provide them with more options.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

As you know full well, remortgaging one’s home is not a solution for repaying the emergency loan.

I will give you a real example of what happened to a businesswoman in my region.

This woman has a fantastic business: a zero waste grocery store. She works hard and is a mom. She struggled for years to find funding. When she gets home at night, she does not always have the time needed to search for funding. She’s taking care of her children.

The programs lack flexibility. This entrepreneur wanted to apply one night when she had a bit of time, and found out she missed the deadline to apply within the program’s timeline. She’s been making me aware of the difficulties women experience for some time now. I heard that same story many times. No solution was put forward, and it just makes things harder for businesses. Remortgaging one’s home is no small thing, Minister.

Will you conduct a study on the impact the delay might have had on small and medium businesses, or SMEs, to determine if women-owned SMEs, specifically, have been affected disproportionately?

Will you conduct this study, Minister?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you for that question.

Again, we provided the CEBA extensions to provide people with flexible options of more time and more flexibility so that they could repay their loans. We provided them that first deadline so if they're able to make the payment by January 18, they can seek up to the $20,000 of forgiveness. If that is not feasible for them, they can seek refinancing with their financial institution. They still have until March 28 of this year to qualify for the up to $20,000 of forgiveness. If that still does not help them, we've provided them with three years, which is until December 31, 2026, to be able to pay it back in full.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Minister, you delegated the responsibility for helping these businesses to banks, when you could have found other solutions. You could have guaranteed the $20,000, for example. You could have made sure that businesses didn’t lose it.

The deadline has now passed. You did not accept the proposal to guarantee the $20,000 and work with banking institutions to make sure that businesses don’t lose the subsidy. Could you at least show a bit of flexibility and create a direct helpline so that entrepreneurs can discuss the possibility of an agreement?

A helpline exists, but people can’t talk to anyone at all. The staff at the other end are not up to date on the program, and entrepreneurs are not getting answers to their questions. That’s not managing a program, Minister. Managing a program means being able to ensure that there is a direct helpline and people can talk to someone.

We can do it with the Canada Revenue Agency. If a person has trouble paying their taxes one year, there’s flexibility for them to work out a repayment agreement. The opportunity is there. Why could we not offer it to entrepreneurs?

As we speak, businesses are at risk of closing their doors. I’m not the one saying it. It’s coming from businesses, chambers of commerce and the CFIB.

To conclude, I would like to add that, according to Ms. Ruth Vachon, who testified before the committee, we lost a lot of businesses between 2018 and 2022. That means 61,000 women-owned businesses were lost, with 35,000 of those in Quebec, which represents 60% of businesses.

How do your programs help businesses, as we continue to lose women-owned businesses?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. Perhaps we can have that response afterward, because the time is up.

I'll now move on to Leah Gazan. Leah, you have six minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Hi, and thank you for coming today, Minister.

I was really disappointed, as my colleague from the Bloc was speaking about, that the government refused to extend the CEBA repayment deadline for loan forgiveness. This is after the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canadian Women's Chamber of Commerce, every premier and the NDP called for that.

Why did you not listen to the main business organizations across the country when they said it was very clear that this would be devastating for small business?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

We've now extended this deadline twice. We understood on December 31, 2022, that small businesses still needed more time and flexibility. We provided that extension until December 31, 2023. When I met with small businesses directly, they asked for more time and more flexibility to be able to repay that.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

That's absolutely true. They did ask for more time and flexibility to pay that back. The government didn't listen. Now there are an estimated 200,000 small businesses that are in even deeper debt while they struggle to keep their doors open with rising costs. We know that many of these businesses are owned by women.

How do you explain to women-owned businesses who are already facing more barriers to success why you refused to provide the relief they were asking for, putting them even more at risk of closing their doors?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Again, we provided small business entrepreneurs multiple options to be able to provide repayment for their CEBA loans. That flexibility allowed them to still seek up to $20,000 forgiveness, whether that was paying back by January 18 or seeking refinancing with their financial institutions as of the end of March. Again, it's another three years at a low interest rate of 5%.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, but we know that for small businesses, as you said, it wasn't really a choice. They were actually forced to either refinance their loans with private lenders or lose out on the forgivable portion of their loan and end up with an additional $20,000 in debt.

We see things like payday loans. It kind of felt like that to me: You either do it or you pay $20,000 more in debt. That doesn't seem very kind to small businesses, with all due respect, Minister. In fact, for businesses that are ready to close their doors, for many that meant closing their doors.

How many small businesses that were forced to refinance their CEBA loans are women-owned? Do you know how many?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I can certainly ask my officials to provide that information to the committee afterwards.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

How many of the small businesses that were not able to refinance or meet the repayment deadlines and are now even further in debt are women-owned?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

We can get that information for you, but I can say right now that nearly 80% of all small businesses have been able to pay back their CEBA loans.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I speak to many small business owners. I know that you were a small business owner and a successful one. You probably had to work twice as hard—you're a woman—to open a business.

Why did the government not consider putting in place programs for women, especially when we're looking at gender equality and the economic empowerment of women? Why did your government not put in place, particularly for at-risk businesses, programs to ensure that we could support gender equality in small business ownership?

I ask you that because your government often claims to be a feminist government. I would disagree with that on a lot of matters, certainly when it comes to businesses and some of the programs. Did your government consider putting in programs that were specific to gender or marginalized communities in terms of lack of representation in small businesses?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I already touched on the 50-30 challenge, but when it comes to entrepreneurship, again, the women entrepreneurship strategy, the first of its kind, has seen us step up as a government and provide more support to women entrepreneurs. We're empowering them. We're providing funds to help them start up and scale up their business. We're providing funds to the ecosystem to support them across the country.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

If you had funds for that, I'm wondering why you didn't have that kind of flexibility in the CEBA loan repayment plan that is now resulting in small businesses closing, including many that are owned by women.

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

What I will say is that a CEBA loan is not the only support we provided small businesses. We have also provided rent and wage subsidies, again to help those small businesses through the pandemic and through a difficult time. That was a total of $100 billion for support for small businesses through the pandemic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have one minute.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I guess the problem with the wage subsidies is a that lot of them went to CEOs instead of to increasing wages. We certainly saw that with Loblaws in terms of support that didn't benefit small business.

I have a question in terms of small businesses. What kind of businesses are most likely to be owned by women?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Maybe Etienne or—

[Francis Bilodeau, Associate Deputy Minister, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Department of Industry]

We do have some facts and figures on that. The second would be retail—

[Etienne-René Massie, Assistant Deputy Minister, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Department of Industry]

The health care and social—