Dan Kelly
President, CEO, & Chair of the Board of Governors, Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB)
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business welcomes the federal announcement of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), which will provide $2,000 per month to workers who have lost their job including the self-employed.
We’re particularly pleased that the federal government has indicated that an employer won’t have to lay off a worker to allow them to qualify for the benefit. How this will operate in practice remains a question employers will need quickly resolved. The CFIB also calls on provincial governments to amend labour legislation to ensure that an employer can move an employee to be paid by the CERB or temporarily lay them off to collect Employment Insurance without triggering normal termination pay requirements.
More needs to be done
The CFIB believes that this new program doesn’t replace the need to increase the 10 percent wage subsidy to 75 percent of wages for all employers, up to a cap of $5,000 per worker per month. A direct wage subsidy to employers will be a far faster way to ensure workers are paid than the CERB, particularly as the new program won’t begin until early April and will pay workers only once per month. A wage subsidy will also help employers who can keep their employees working from home but have no or limited business income with which to pay them.
The CFIB is focused on measures that will keep the connections between workers and employers and not require layoffs. This is imperative to ensure employees can go back to work the day after the emergency ends, allowing Canada’s economy to return to normal as quickly as possible.
