Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I am disappointed to be rising again today to ask about the question that I brought up in the House a month ago. It is all about the Canada emergency business account and the failure of the government to resolve an issue to allow businesses to apply for the increase in the account.
I rose at the beginning of May to raise this issue and to ask a simple question: When will this be resolved? It has now been nearly a month and there has still been no movement or clarification on when resolution will occur.
As I stated previously, after the announced CEBA expansion in December of last year, many Canadians applied for the expanded business loan. Many were denied, as records held by the CRA did not match their applications. However, there is no method for Canadian businesses to update their submissions.
In January, the government promised to fix this, yet here we are nearly six months later without a solution, leaving businesses to wait for the government to take action. When I asked about it earlier this month, the response I got from the parliamentary secretary was “Financial institutions will be reaching out directly to businesses that have applied for, but not yet received, the expansions that they have requested and we will be providing clarifying information through our banks.”
To date, my constituents have not been able to update their submissions. One constituent has even provided us monthly updates to let us know that there has been no process put for in place for nearly six months, demonstrating consistent proof of inaction. The updates the constituents have received from the banks say the following: “The Government of Canada has not yet finalized the remediation process for applicants to submit corrected or additional information in connection with their CEBA expansion enrolment request.” According to the CEBA website, “The CEBA program continues to actively work with more than 230 financial institutions to finalize these processes that will allow select $20,000 expansion applicants that were previously informed to submit additional information.”
I will give some positive news. I know one local business owner who did finally get clarification and was able to update their application just this past week. What was the problem the owner had to wait five months for? The postal code was wrong in the application. It took five months to fix a very simple clerical error in an application.
Owners of another local business, Foxx Salon & Spa, have had to go into their personal savings to keep their business operating. They have had no income now for 10 months, and here they are hanging on by the last thread and taking every last bit of savings they have to try to keep their business afloat while they are waiting for the $20,000.
I have a couple of simple questions for the government. Of the 230 financial institutions, for how many has the government yet to finalize a process for amending the applications? How many businesses have been able to amend their application since December in order to receive the expanded loan? How many businesses are still waiting in limbo because the government has not prioritized ensuring that businesses can access this vital lifeline? Will the government provide the data and show it has movement on resolving this issue?
The bottom line is the same question I asked a month ago: Will the government commit to a date when it will have this problem resolved?