Local retailer Tamara Nowakowsky owns Delish General Store, a boutique and soap refill shop in North Vancouver, B.C.The owner of North Vancouver's Delish General Store can barely afford to restock her boutique's refillable bulk soaps, locally-made gifts and housewares.
"People are nervous and buckling down on purchases," she said. "There's a lot of rumblings in the market."The Canada Emergency Business Account repayment deadline is looming, but some small businesses say they need more time to pay the loans back. Guest host Catherine Cullen speaks with one jewelry wholesaler in Toronto; Dan Kelly, president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business; and Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
She said she owes Ottawa $52,000 in pandemic loans received through the Canada Emergency Business Account program and has to pay them back by Dec. 31. Tens of thousands of B.C. businesses like hers have yet to repay. "Coming off the last few years, and how the hit they've taken has been … it's really important to the community that these small businesses survive."Ottawa said the program was a temporary measure to help businesses weather the pandemic, and the repayment deadlines were clear and already extended once.
The group's data suggests small retailers pump six times more of their earnings into the local community than large multinational corporations.But a new Angus Reid Group opinion poll commissioned by the CFIB found most Canadians don't realize there's a big difference between large and small stores. The Angus Reid Group conducted the poll from July 13-19, using an online panel of 1,504 Canadian adults weighted by region and demographics, including 189 British Columbians. The margin of error nationally would be equivalent to 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.