Madam Chair, small businesses are the heart and soul of Winnipeg Centre, yet the government has made their ability to survive questionable. Paul Taylor, who owns the Brickhouse Gym in Winnipeg Centre, said, “These rent assistance programs are not a one-size-fits-all issue. Businesses have suffered from COVID-19. Programs need to be scalable to help Canadian small businesses survive. On top of the failure of the rent program that relies on landlords to sign on, the wage subsidy arbitrarily requires businesses to have their own CRA business number since before the pandemic, but a lot of small businesses do not, including many in the gig economy, in arts, film—”
In the House of Commons on July 8th, 2020. See this statement in context.