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Ontario launches Small Business Support Grant to aid COVID-19-impacted organizations

The application window for the Ontario Small Business Support Grant is now open. The provincial COVID-19 relief measure is intended as yet another lifeline to aid struggling small to medium-sized businesses across Ontario that have been forced to close or reduce services due to the most recent province-wide lockdown. Qualifying businesses—including corporations, partnerships, charities, non-profits and […]

Factory workers

Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy enhanced, CRA announces new T4 requirements

The federal government continues to adjust and clarify various features of the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy  program, the COVID-19 relief benefit designed to help employers cover a portion of their wage expenditures through the worst of the pandemic. Another round of lockdowns, coupled with a stubbornly challenging economic environment across many sectors, has prompted Ottawa […]

Fall Economic Statement 2020 Parliament buildings Centre Block

Fall Economic Statement predicts record deficits, extends COVID-19 relief measures for business

The federal government’s Fall Economic Statement 2020 delivered few surprises. As expected, it did not provide a clear fiscal anchor for the year ahead. Nor was there a plan to return to fiscal balance in the near future. Ottawa hasn’t delivered a formal budget since March, 2019, well before the coronavirus pandemic sent the country’s […]

woman working from her home office

CRA signals a willingness to simplify home office tax deductions for employees

  Almost overnight, the COVID-19 crisis launched many Canadian businesses into the most ambitious remote-work/home office experiment ever attempted. Widespread lockdowns forced businesses to either shutter or have their employees work from home until further notice. Many still are—and have no plan to return to the office. Indeed, many a CFO and accounting department embraced […]

2020 Ontario budget posts record deficits, offers major spending to support business

In tabling the 2020 Ontario Budget yesterday, the provincial government reminded us that the path to fiscal stability will be long and arduous as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic—and that new COVID-19 lockdowns could still inflict major economic damage. In doing so, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives scrapped plans to balance the budget in […]

office staff in the workplace

Kick-start your return-to-growth strategy with a focus on the workplace

What will the new normal be? That’s the question businesses across Canada and around the world are trying to answer as governments lift restrictions put in place to help limit the spread of COVID-19. With companies eagerly reopening retail locations, ramping up production at manufacturing facilities and re-energizing their offices, it’s critical for leaders to […]

Office workers

COVID-19 Update: Ottawa extends CERB, overhauls Employment Insurance program

As the fall approaches, federal COVID-19 relief measures are slowly wound down and the economic recovery plods along at a glacial pace with a potential pandemic second wave looming large, Ottawa understood that Canadians would need additional financial assistance in the months ahead. It delivered a costly new aid package last week that includes significant […]

Construction workers and Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy extended

COVID-19: Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy extended and expanded

As the federal government takes steps to slowly wind down COVID-19 relief measures such as the Canada Emergency Relief Benefit, its economic recovery strategy is becoming clearer after it was announced on Friday that the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy  would be extended to November 21st, 2020 (or nine claim periods) and possibly to December 31st, […]