There isn’t enough being done for small businesses by the Trudeau government amid the pandemic according to the leader of the Official Opposition.

Appearing on the NL Morning News, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, says many entrepreneurs have been feeling the heat during the pandemic. “Small businesses are the ones hanging on by the thread and I don’t know if you’ve seen the report from Restaurants Canada, they’re worried about 60 percent of the restaurants in Canada failing in the next three months. 60 percent! That the main street from B.C. to Atlantic Canada to Ontario.”

He spoke about his own favourite eatery in his Ontario Durham riding going under. “My own community, my favourite restaurant, Thai restaurant my wife and I would go to, they closed in the pandemic and won’t be reopening so we need to make sure some of the support programs fit the needs of business.

He feels his party’s ideas though, seem to be falling on deaf ears. “What frustrated us is we had recommendations to fix the rent subsidy that was impacting a lot of small businesses.”

“We proposed this in May. Mr Trudeau prorogued parliament and didn’t make the fixes until about three weeks ago with a new bill they brought in, we told them we would support this.”

“We told them we would support this, we have supported the CERB. We voted for the wage subsidy. We tried to improve these programs but small businesses, whether it’s on the emergency business account, the rent program.”

“You know there were a lot of misses that really hurt small and medium size businesses”

O’Toole painted a bleak picture that could be around the corner. “70 percent of Canadians work for a small and medium size business so if they fail in large numbers, we’re going to have prolonged unemployment and the real pandemic after the pandemic will be under employment and a sagging economy.”

Photo: Durhamregion.com