East Coast small businesses seek return of COVID aid amid latest restrictions

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This article was published 15/12/2021 (1064 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HALIFAX – Business groups in the Maritimes called on Thursday for a restart of provincial aid programs, as restaurants, retailers and other small operators began to record losses in Christmas sales due to the latest COVID-19 restrictions.

Sue Uteck, executive director of the Halifax-based Spring Garden Area Business Association, said the recently announced restaurant restrictions in Nova Scotia requiring two metres of distance between tables led immediately to cancelled reservations for holiday gatherings.

Meanwhile, Uteck — whose group represents about 230 businesses — said general public anxiety generated by the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is keeping Halifax shoppers and diners at home.

“While it was minimal, the small business COVID-19 grant of $5,000 needs to be reinstituted now. … Let’s get this money flowing,” she said in a telephone interview.

“There’s a lot of confusion, a lot of anger and a lot of frustration out there.”

Nova Scotia reported 287 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, the majority of which were identified in the central zone, which includes Halifax. There were six people in hospital with the disease.

New Brunswick reported 177 new cases of COVID-19, with 41 people hospitalized, including 15 people in intensive care.

Louis-Philippe Gauthier, Atlantic spokesman for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said the provincial grants of about $5,000 offered to businesses in Nova Scotia and in New Brunswick earlier in the pandemic wouldn’t be enough this time to help operators sustain holiday season losses.

Many businesses have accumulated debt during the pandemic and were relying on the return of regular sales to reverse the flow of red ink, Gauthier said.

“Operators make up a substantial amount of revenues at this time of year to go through the leaner months of January, February and March,” he said. “The impact of this set of restrictions was immediate. Governments should really study this in depth and react quickly to this.”

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston told reporters Thursday he understood the growing need to rapidly restore the aid programs. “We’re going to do whatever we can to support them,” he said. “We know this is a hard time, particularly this time of year with the amount of business they would have had on the books.”

He noted that a fund administered by Dalhousie University to provide COVID-19 relief still has $10.3 million remaining in it, adding that it could be used to assist businesses.

Liz Chambers, owner of Le Bistro by Liz on Halifax’s South Park Street, said she’s preparing to call customers to cancel New Year’s Eve bookings worth thousands of dollars.

“With them (the government) forcing us to close half of our business down, it certainly would be nice if we’re compensated for that,” she said.

“Our biggest night of the year is New Year’s Eve. … For us to go from 130 people coming down to 60 is huge for me,” she said.

The story was similar around the city. “We’ve seen a lot of large parties cancelled at all of our locations,” Joe McGuinness, co-owner of the Legendary Hospitality Group in Halifax, said Thursday in an interview.

McGuiness said that for larger businesses, the earlier provincial support program of $5,000 wasn’t going to suffice. “It should be tiered depending on the size of the business,” he said.

Similar health orders requiring two metres of distance between restaurant tables were announced in New Brunswick this week, while in Prince Edward Island, the government said restaurants “should make every effort” to ensure diners from separate households are distanced from one another. The Island also restricted table gatherings to a maximum of 20 people, after having no limits.

Newfoundland and Labrador hasn’t announced capacity limits or distancing requirements for restaurants. During an Omicron briefing earlier this week, health officials said travellers to the province would face more testing.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 16, 2021.