photo courtesy Government of Alberta

By David Opinko

Province announces commercial rent assistance and one-time payment to small businesses

Jun 6, 2020 | 11:20 AM

EDMONTON, AB – The Government of Alberta has announced two significant measures it believes will help companies, particularly small businesses, weather the current economic crisis.

Premier Jason Kenney says business owners have been hammered by a “triple whammy” of crises, including the public health crisis, the global recession, and the oil price crash.

During this week’s telephone town halls with a variety of industry stakeholders, Minister of Economic Development, Trade, and Tourism Tanya Fir explains that there were two primary concerns that most entrepreneurs were facing – a worry about being evicted due to not being able to pay rent and a lack of cash flow when reopening.

That is why Kenney announced, “measures to prevent businesses from being evicted by landlords who fail to act responsibly in their dealings with commercial tenants.”

The provincial government is contributing at least $67-million to the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance Program in partnership with Ottawa.

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It provides up to 50 per cent of monthly rent costs to the landlord if they agree to cut rent for small business tenants by 75 per cent “and if they promise not to evict them.”

“Small businesses have told us loud and clear that they need us to help fill a gap that has left some of them unable to get the support they need, because, in many cases, commercial landlords are not passing on this short-term rent COVID subsidy to those businesses that have been so heavy-hit, and in some cases are threatening to evict commercial tenants, which we think is unacceptable during this unprecedented economic crisis,” adds Kenney.

“We’re listening to those employers and we’ve got their backs.”

The second measure announced Friday is for small and medium business owners who have had their operations shut down or severely curtailed over the last couple of months.

Those who have fewer than 500 employees will be eligible for a one-time relaunch payment of up to 15 per cent of monthly sales revenue to a maximum of $5,000.

“To ensure businesses and non-profits have access to the capital needed to reopen, Alberta’s government is contributing up to $200-million to relaunch funding to assist them with the costs of reopening their businesses, like the costs of implementing enhanced measures to prevent the spread of the virus or rent, other supplies, employee wages, or replacing inventory.”

Ac cording to Statistics Canada, Alberta’s unemployment rate for May grew to 15.5 per cent.