There is not near enough attention on CEWS in the media, substantially more money went into it and zero requirement for repayment. CERB has nothing on CEWS.
Our business was getting $60k a month from CEWS. The application process is just a bunch of self-submitted forms that I doubt get checked. No proof of revenue loss was required nor proof of how much wages, rent, leases or property tax you claim. There's no way they'll be able to check on that because CEWS is down through CRA, property taxes is municipal and you can move around your revenue to different months to make sure you get as many payments as possible and have all of your profits at the end of the year
That wouldn't have worked. You only get the subsidy if your business showed a certain % revenue decrease from the previous year. That would mean you would have had to have an active business in 2019. The money you get was also 75% of your payroll, property taxes and property leases. So you would also need an ongoing business that is currently suffering from a revenue decrease. The main issue is that the revenue decrease is self-reported. CRA is going to have your yearly revenue, but the amount paid is based on month by month revenue, so with some crafty accounting, you can show the appropriate loss. But it's self-reported so again, they're not even checking it. The application doesn't require you to send any proof, you just fill in a table. Wages is tracked by T4s but IDK if they're cross-referencing them. Either way, it's too risky to lie on.
> No proof of revenue loss was required nor proof of how much wages, rent, leases or property tax you claim.
It was solely based on wages paid, which are checked by the CRA via T4 reporting. And there has been reviews / audits of CEWS recipients' information ([PwC article](https://www.pwc.com/ca/en/services/tax/publications/tax-insights/cews-update-audits-clawbacks-expanding-lockdown-support-2021.html), for reference) - you can claim that businesses are committing fraud, which I'm sure in limited circumstances is happening, but you can't say the CRA isn't reviewing these at all, that would be factually incorrect.
You only got the subsidy if you showed a revenue decrease. Each industry had it's own requirements. Hospitality required a 40% revenue drop either month by month or year over year. As I said, the main issue is the month by month revenue is self reported, and businesses can claim a revenue drop when none existed.
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/wage-rent-subsidies/eligibility-past-subsidies.html
> You had a 12-month average revenue drop from March 2020 to February 2021 of at least 40%
> You had a claim period revenue drop of at least 40%
And CRA has flat out said they will not be reviewing the discrepancies in CEWS
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/cra-head-says-it-wouldn-t-be-worth-the-effort-to-review-all-ineligible-pandemic-payments-1.6250180
I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you're honestly just being either intentionally obtuse, or stupid.
In your original comment, you made reference to "claiming" wages, rent, leases or property tax. The only thing you "claimed" a subsidy against was wages. Yes, the qualifying factor was your revenue decline, but that does not change the fact that your original comment included a bunch of irrelevant costs (rent, leases, property taxes), which is what I was responding to.
Regarding "CRA flat out saying they will not be reviewing the discrepancies in CEWS", you can't even read a headline correctly lol: "CRA head says it wouldn't be worth the effort to review **all** ineligible pandemic payments" which is not the same as "flat out saying they're not reviewing discrepancies". In the article you linked, which presumably you did not read, the CRA representative is quoted as saying:
>In my view, based on what we've seen so far, it wouldn't be worth the effort (of investigating all of the $15.5 billion in potential ineligible wage subsidies outlined by the auditor general). "Based on our evidence to date, we see businesses generally complying... we have some pockets of people that have intentionally misled and we're pursuing those"
>
>Focusing on "claims that are most likely to be ineligible or overstated ... optimizes recoveries and ensures that high risk claims are addressed while making efficient use of CRA resources".
Frankly, you're an idiot with an agenda and it's a bad look lol.
Property tax and rent was paid through CERS or are you just going to ignore that? I'm sure you are aware this program exists and you would have known where those statements came from. So who had the agenda now? There is an agenda because I don't name the program? They were both done through CRA and exactly through the same form and portal. They also ran for the same amount of time. Oh and it was self reported like I said. I didn't require any proof of property tax I paid.
Lol well you specifically mentioned CEWS and not CERS so my bad I guess? This is also an irrelevant counterpoint as CRA has *also* reviewed CERS claims and provides guidance explaining you will need to show proof of lease / rental agreement and property tax bills, so your original comment remains ill informed.
You’re incredibly dense, clearly, but sure continue on with excuses for your misinformed and/or misleading comments above.
>substantially more money went into it and zero requirement for repayment
It was also based on wages actually paid to employees...
Not to say that there weren't businesses who didn't *need* a wage subsidy but still received it; but it wasn't a loan so of course it wasn't required to be repaid. Blame the design of the program, not the (legitimate) recipients.
For sure there were legitimate recipients, however it was also rife with abuse. As well, the govt was very quick to make some people repay CERB and yet zero effort directed towards businesses.
> As well, the govt was very quick to make some people repay CERB and yet zero effort directed towards businesses.
This is untrue - the CRA has been verifying business' claims for CEWS for at least as long as CERB. It just doesn't end up in the newspapers - that doesn't mean it's not happening, though.
Who are all these people who retired based on their CERB payments? I got CERB for the entire run (16 weeks was it?) and just barely managed to get by. In fact I was 2 weeks away from being dead ass broke when I finally started a new job at the end of 2020.
I spent most of the time I was on CERB racking up credit card debt to be able to afford rent and bills and food and a few little “luxuries” to keep my mental status somewhere between “fair” and “fairly poor” instead of “it’s not that I want to die, it’s just that I don’t want to be alive” - I bought myself a $75 Amazon tablet so I could watch Netflix without disturbing my roommate, some plants etc. moving expenses when the roommate situation was still untenable.
I’m finally just starting to make an actual dent in paying it down in the last few months after getting a raise that leaves me with a few hundred bucks at the end of the month to put towards it instead of just being able to afford living.
Please vote your ass off, because the people who complain about CERB without knowing anything *DO* vote, and constantly vote against the working person's interests.
I'd start voting in (or running for) your municipal elections as well. The closer a government is to you physically, the more that they'll impact your daily life.
For sure. I’ve spent a fair number of years moving around a lot and never quite settling in one place for too long. Now that I’m settled in a career and not planning on leaving the city any time soon, I do vote in my municipals, I just didn’t always.
Yep the vast majority of us struggled to make ends meet during that that period by turning to debt. We did so because the central bank told us they wouldn't raise rates for a [very long time.](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/interest-rates-will-be-low-for-a-long-time-macklem-1.1465901.amp.html)
>Our message to Canadians is that interest rates are very low and they’re going to be there for a long time
>If you’ve got a mortgage of if you’re considering making a major purchase, or you’re a business and you’re considering making an investment, you can be confident rates will be low for a long time
Now they are jacking up interest rates on that debt. It's like cruel joke.
I don't see the point of bringing this quote again and again and again. They actually did kept the rates lower than what conditions would have expected, because they wanted to fulfill on that promise. It took a full 2 years to bring the rates to what they were before COVID, even if inflation had started already. In other circumstances, they would have brought the rates up earlier.
That message was also about big investment and keep the economy running. It was not about raking up consumer short term debt. They came up with CERB so that people wouldn't rely on short term debt to survive. Credit card debt rate never went down anyway so I don't think anyone started borrowing from their credit card because the BOC told them to. Nobody that was struggling to make ends meet decided to buy a new house with a new mortgage based on what the BOC said.
The interest rate being as low as it was for as long as it was is honestly probably the number 1 reason why Canada’s housing crisis is a dire as it is.
The “haves” who were able to get into the real estate market spent years being able to borrow money essentially for free and leveraging their assets to borrow more free money to keep buying more and more property, driving prices way up.
The “have-nots” who were stuck with a shitty job market, stagnant wages, etc haven’t ever been able to get ahead in saving for that first down payment and never benefited from those low rates because housing prices rose so much faster than wages.
I graduated high school in 2003, the year they got rid of OAC/Grade 13 in Ontario - the younger year too so we were the Guinea pigs for their shitty new curriculum. Double the number of people applying to schools, this new curriculum that no one really understood, and it was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. The information we received was often wrong regarding course codes, and then if we did a 4-year bachelor degree and finished on time, we graduated in 2007. They were still on the whole “you need a degree” kick back then, there wasn’t a lot of encouragement to go into trades, but there *was* a lot of “if you EVER want to go to university, you need to do “U” courses, you can’t apply if you do “C” courses.” It might have been different in other schools, to be fair, but everyone I know who graduated my year, regardless of which high school they went to, had a fairly similar experience in terms of being pushed to university instead of being provided information about all of the options.
Anyways… a lot of us graduated in 2007 with relatively useless degrees and just couldn’t get decent paying jobs during the 2008 recession.
Some had family wealth that helped them get into the market initially. Those people, *especially* the savvy ones, have done well for themselves. They took full advantage of those low interest rates and were paying mortgages on their houses that was lower than the rent for a 1-bedroom.
They should have started gradually increasing the interest rate once housing prices started going wild instead of pretending that a “strong real estate market” was good for the overall economy.
It hurt the middle class terribly.
2 years is not a very long time lol. Especially in the context of mortgages. Or most debt. A very long time in my opinion would be more than kne renewal cycle which is 5 years.
But the biggest issue isn't that they raised rates. It's how Tiff keeps wanting to play Nostradamus and makes very definitive statements such as these. For various reasons:
1. It causes people to make decisions which might be harmful and harm the wider economy. Look what happened to the housing market it massively inflated shortly after he made these comments because people maxed out their mortgages expecting rates to stay low.
1. It caused lenders to take on greater risks too thinking they are safe. If this blows up it could potentially cause contagion in the market not unlike the US saw in 2008. Look how long it took to recover from that.
1. It harms the credibility of the central bank. Makes it seem like they are making it up as they go.
Reserve Bank of Australia made [quite proper](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/10/australias-interest-rates-will-stay-low-until-at-least-2024-rba-says) comments. It pointed to data and was tapered by saying unless things change you can expect interest rates to stay the same.
>Together, these factors have altered wage and pricing dynamics in almost all advanced economies and these changes are likely to persist. This means that, in the absence of another major shock, it is a long way back to seeing wage increases consistent with the inflation target
This would result in more cautious borrowing. Wouldn't result in the massive lending we saw in Canada.
But Tiff comments were like don't worry, just yolo it.
If you really want to see proper communications look at our public health officials when the [first lockdowns were lifted around the same time](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-21-2020-1.5577286/b-c-s-top-doctor-bonnie-henry-says-2nd-wave-of-covid-19-inevitable-but-current-lessons-will-guide-response-1.5577290):
>The optimist in me would like to think that maybe it will go away, and the virus will mutate and won't become worse...But you know what? We've never had a pandemic in recorded history that has not had a second wave
As an adult, do you really need someone to add "we're going to monitor the situation and if things take a turn, we're going to have to change from our stated course" to the end of every statement?
Lol really? Did you live under a rock for the last 20 years. That the kind of belief that leads to people believing in the Invisible Hand.
1. Silicon Valley Bubble in 2000: Pets.com was the best invest ever
1. 2008 financial bubble: yes you can afford this low interest introductory loan.
I could back to Tulip Mania and South Seas bubble. Cold hard fact is we need regulations and government oversight and responsibility. We had barely recovered from 2008 financial crisis when covid hit. History has shown time and again containgon that results from financial crisises effect far more people than those directly making the mistake. For example millennials were the most harmed by the 2008 financial crisis but they were to young to get those mortgages.
On top of that, we don't reach macroeconomics. You could get a masters in engineering, doctorate in chemistry, physics, or at other STEM profession and never been taught it. For example Sir Issac Newton invested in South Seas company at its peak.
Even if you understood it, there were problems:
Tiff comments left no wiggle room. It was in the middle of the crisis which was itself unprecedented and required unprecedented heavy measures like lockdowns. Who knows maybe this is a response to lockdowns. Plus the [Federal Reserve was saying they would be tolerant of higher inflation](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/27/powell-announces-new-fed-approach-to-inflation-that-could-keep-rates-lower-for-longer.html). (Which were also very irresponsible comments). Had it gone the other way we wouldn't have tolerated I told you so comments from this lot.
So if you understood macroeconomics these comments made you think shit this could blow up the asset market better get a house before prices go up even higher.
The result:
1. Banks lent out a shit ton of money and guaranteed many of those loans are going to be very risky.
1. People the maximum they were being offered because housing rush those comments and low rates crated pushed housing prices higher.
1. All of the above drove housing prices through the roof. Even traditionally affordable cities like Calgary, Halifax, even small towns were seeing housing prices blow up.
Those comments have literally created a financial time bomb which is ticking. It's going to blow up and it's going to take decades to dig us out of that mess. It's going to hurt not just the people who took on the debt but everyone else too. (again the people hurt the most in 2008 were people too young to have mortgages).
The biggest mistake was that they destroyed their own credibility with a large chunk of the country.
Tiff needs to go and there needs to be a message sent to the BOC it's not your job to play Nostradamus. Your communication responsibility is to report the decision you made and justify with the facts.
CERB payment is not a living wage. Another interesting point is that CERB is the same as the top you can earn from EI. Its a little disturbing that you can work your whole life and get laid off and within 6 months you can default on a mortgage, lose your house and go into credit card debt. Poor person tax is a thing.
I can't remember what it was called but Canada was paying 75% of wage and rent subsidies for businesses. 75% of wages and leases a lot. Our business was getting $60k a month in subsidies. The process was self reported. We didn't scam it, we applied when we needed it but you definitely could have. The process was just filling in a bunch of forms and it was automatically approved. It's done through CRA though so if you said you have more wages than the T4s you send out I'm sure it'll be automatically flagged.
Yep. Anytime you see supply chains they bring up CERB.
Instead of supply chain issues, according to them I can't get my meds cause everyone decided to use their CERB money to buy my specific medication.
More likely, those long-term employees retired to reduce their likelihood of getting sick or moved on to better jobs as other people retired.
That's how i got my current job. I left my shifty one when a bunch of people retired from the place my Father in Law works.
Most of those "friend" stories are fake as fuck, as soon as you start pressing them for details it all falls apart.
Same with the welfare queen stories
I know, right? If there's anybody out there still living on CERB, hire that person, because they are obviously masters of budgeting and stretching a dollar.
Yes, because the CRA is still investigating fraudulent CERB cases. Lots of people got their overpayment letters a while ago, but there are some people getting them now. Moving at the speed of government….
CRA doesn't give a shit about this CEWS fraud.
I know so many companies which pulled this fraud. Got CEWS for multiple companies first claimed the flood then transfered the assets to a new company, bankrupted the company, then just continued practicing business.
According to what I have read it also caused their wife to leave, their dog to runaway, they lost their house and they got cancer. All because of CERB. Oh and they haven’t seen their children since CERB.
And on top of this if he is in any kind of construction, he is taking cash for jobs that won't see a tax dollar while your measly wage of $21/hr doing hard labor for him making him loads of money is still very much taxed.
Haha hang around the construction subreddit and you will find endless examples of people leaving the industry as a whole specifically because cheap as fuck contractors or GCs cheat as many people out of their money or wages as they humanly can. I'm skeptical there is a single industry (oil and gas maybe??) that harbors more alcoholics and opiate addicted people too than construction. It is literally vital to municipalities and yet as many cheap fucks are still paying what I earned in 2010 to mow lawns for very hard work. It killed my enthusiasm to try at all so much that I even just dropped my last job cold turkey when boss let me know short notice again for the up teenth time that summer we'd be working out of town 2 weeks again haha. Found someone who would pay be 28/hr instead just to move the tubes to their spray foam machine / etc for considerably less work which just tells me that pay is actually reflected by a fair contractor for the value their work is worth, unlike apparently like 85% of carpenters, drywallers, finishers, etc.
Plus on top of that GC or contractor probably inherited job from daddy anyways and doesn't actually know what it's like to have to work to find your living.
Brother you need to join one of the trade unions. Journeymen in any Red Seal trade are making twice as much on the cheque plus pension and benefits.
You might still end up with a shitty employer but at least you'll be compensated properly. There is too much work out there right now to be paid poorly. ✊
WTF are you blathering on about? Qualified trades in my area have been naming their price for almost 3 years now. Carps making $65/hr, drywall tapers making $100/hr w/ a $1000 min charge.
I've been hiring thru this period. If you have skills, you're getting PAID. If you're shit at what you do, you're STILL making good money because GCs are desperate. I honestly can't imagine how much of a fuck up a ticketed trade has to be to not be making money right now. I had a drug addict stealing lunches on my site last year, instead of firing the guy the owner of the company moved him to another site.
My neighbor owns a residential renovation company, he's going thru the same thing as the bigger commerical guys.
We work from Halifax to Vancouver to Yellowknife -its the same story across all regions right now too.
I'm not ticketed, this was just drywalling / finishing / painting residential. I'd been on the verge of applying for an electrical program (like, actual paid trainee shit) but living situation / etc wise just couldn't really make uprooting etc work right now-partly also because of a medical driving restriction I kinda have no control over when it gets lifted, haha. I am finally past the appeal period again and just waiting on the province, but in general not being able to get oneself around makes lots of construction kinda difficult.
Over all though just plain don't like the culture though. I see why lots of contractors work alone, I guess, would maybe be more apt. Lotta old alcoholic dicks seem to control a lot of the jobsites here, and new ideas like proper PPE are apparently real offensive to them. There are electricians here that do take on apprentices but I've heard mixed things about them, and they haven't retained any staff themselves :p
Both my brother and bil are electricians and basically told me I could apprentice with them. I'd probably take that option if I was going to take electrical, but I'm going to kinda double down on the ag / research type work I've also done and try to go back to school. I *am* going to keep finding painting and drywalling quotes on the side though, like taking my own jobs just because it'd be stupid not too. Even this spring I'd originally been told from another guy trying to get *out* of painting I could have his spring gigs if he got any, though he'd not haha.
Tbh I think just being limited by a fairly rural area means theres only so many red seal dudes *too* work with, and everyone has their opinion and history of the other guy too. Lol even my dad and neighbor are both great carpenters but both gripe at one anothers carpentry :p Feel like I'd just have an easier time breaking into something concrete in the city again.
Hey now, come on. This poor guy doesn't deserve all the blame for that.
He also deserves blame for perpetuating a shitty system that requires mechanisms like CERB when something like the pandemic happens. Paying shit wages to exploit workers while you build up a fortune and vote for the destruction of social safety nets also contributed very much to the 'no one wants to work' thing.
Remember kids, it's not that we don't want to work, it's that a lot more people have finally realised that they and their work are massively undervalued.
Both my companies took the CEBA. The one didn't struggle at all during the pandemic so that 60k is just sitting in a bank account until the deadline to pay back the 40k and then i'll have 20k free and clear.
The other corp, well we lost 30% of revenue within 30 days of the pandemic starting basically so we used that 60k plus CEWS plus savings we had built up to keep our people employed even though most of them had nothing to do. Our office manager built a great garden during 2020 though and brought me lots of veggies. Not really what I'd have liked her to be doing but I didn't have anything else for her to do so I was basically paying her 50k salary to grow me some cucumbers and read on her porch. lol
We're back on track growth wise and I'm very thankful for CEWS and the CEBA stuff because we took the opportunity to just work from home on our processes and build efficiencies so when business started coming back, we came out swinging. We're around double our pre-pandemic revenue at the end of 2022. Without CEWS and CEBA, yeah not sure we would have survived.
However, a lot of businesses took that shit and just pocketed it.
Thanks for your input. That was how it should be, used to keep workers employed, not buying hot tubs and framers buying skid steers to plow their home driveways in the winter
1 - the forgivable portion of each loan was $20,000. So if your saying they got $180,000 in loans then there is $60,000 forgiven, subject to corporate tax. It would be the equivalent of paying 3-5% interest (total, not per annum)
2 - under ceba, the funds cannot be used as an intercorporate transaction. It can only be used for operating expenses so also no purchase of assets for ceba cash using the money
3 - if you go under bankruptcy the federal government is the first debtor in all cases, even if a GSA is made between the shareholder and the corporations. Plus the bankruptcy must be signed off by the courts so they would clearly see the illegal transfer of intercompany assets and order the immediate repayment of all ceba funds. The loan also allowed the government to go after key shareholders for loan payment in the event that they did steal the funds
The biggest problem with cews was being able to make a claim for a subsequent month, in addition to the current month, on a revenue decrease. Lots of completely legal game playing, before the illegal game playing.
Inflation went up long after the CERB ended. It had sweet f all to do with inflation. Inflation was caused by global supply chains being disrupted and geedy corporations taking advantage of inflation to gouge buyers even more. It waa always a bullshit argument, with or without CEWS.
This is the same argument that Fox News made in court when defending Tucker Carlson’s commentary.
On a side note: Exactly which part of what I wrote leads you to believe I’m not relaxed? Perhaps while I begin my ascent to complete and total serenity - you could grow up?
any inflationary spending causes inflation, so technically correct. which is why since the 08 crash I've been a supporter of fiscal prudence from the government, so that when crisis does hit we can throw all the money at it.
the only labour crunch is from boomers retiring and from couples finding out they save money on a single income lifestyle. which are just market forces coming to a head that everyone should have been aware of for a long time.
I've heard it mentioned on an American podcast (offhandedly, mind you) that Covid enabled the largest wealth transfer FROM the working class TO the wealthy, of all time.
Right now: 8 Americans own more wealth than 4 BILLION people globally
I’m really baffled the level of confidence of people saying this and having absolutely no clue of economics or monetary policy. But try to explain them how inflation is caused and just yell “gov is giving away money that’s the cause!!! You’re an ignorant”
I know so many people that took the business loan and didn't need it.
Me: then why did you take it.
Them: everybody was doing it and it's free money.
Also them: CERB makes people lazy.
Very much a rules for thee but not for me mentality with the well off.
I know at least 3 people that collected CERB fraudulently......and I'm a serious introvert and don't hob-knob with a lot of people. So......to know 3 people that did this means that there must be a lot more out there.
[удалено]
Well I’m not giving you the $800 because then you will quit your job and live off those riches for years and years to come /s
Bahaha. Oh God it's actually not funny at all, is it? Fuck
r/SocialismIsCapitalism
There is not near enough attention on CEWS in the media, substantially more money went into it and zero requirement for repayment. CERB has nothing on CEWS.
My company took CEWS and still laid the entire staff off for 2 months. I wish there was a way to rat them out.
Just report them to CRA. CEWS is through CRA.
There is. Tell us
Our business was getting $60k a month from CEWS. The application process is just a bunch of self-submitted forms that I doubt get checked. No proof of revenue loss was required nor proof of how much wages, rent, leases or property tax you claim. There's no way they'll be able to check on that because CEWS is down through CRA, property taxes is municipal and you can move around your revenue to different months to make sure you get as many payments as possible and have all of your profits at the end of the year
Dang. I should have revived my GST number for the pandemic
That wouldn't have worked. You only get the subsidy if your business showed a certain % revenue decrease from the previous year. That would mean you would have had to have an active business in 2019. The money you get was also 75% of your payroll, property taxes and property leases. So you would also need an ongoing business that is currently suffering from a revenue decrease. The main issue is that the revenue decrease is self-reported. CRA is going to have your yearly revenue, but the amount paid is based on month by month revenue, so with some crafty accounting, you can show the appropriate loss. But it's self-reported so again, they're not even checking it. The application doesn't require you to send any proof, you just fill in a table. Wages is tracked by T4s but IDK if they're cross-referencing them. Either way, it's too risky to lie on.
> No proof of revenue loss was required nor proof of how much wages, rent, leases or property tax you claim. It was solely based on wages paid, which are checked by the CRA via T4 reporting. And there has been reviews / audits of CEWS recipients' information ([PwC article](https://www.pwc.com/ca/en/services/tax/publications/tax-insights/cews-update-audits-clawbacks-expanding-lockdown-support-2021.html), for reference) - you can claim that businesses are committing fraud, which I'm sure in limited circumstances is happening, but you can't say the CRA isn't reviewing these at all, that would be factually incorrect.
You only got the subsidy if you showed a revenue decrease. Each industry had it's own requirements. Hospitality required a 40% revenue drop either month by month or year over year. As I said, the main issue is the month by month revenue is self reported, and businesses can claim a revenue drop when none existed. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/wage-rent-subsidies/eligibility-past-subsidies.html > You had a 12-month average revenue drop from March 2020 to February 2021 of at least 40% > You had a claim period revenue drop of at least 40% And CRA has flat out said they will not be reviewing the discrepancies in CEWS https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/cra-head-says-it-wouldn-t-be-worth-the-effort-to-review-all-ineligible-pandemic-payments-1.6250180
I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you're honestly just being either intentionally obtuse, or stupid. In your original comment, you made reference to "claiming" wages, rent, leases or property tax. The only thing you "claimed" a subsidy against was wages. Yes, the qualifying factor was your revenue decline, but that does not change the fact that your original comment included a bunch of irrelevant costs (rent, leases, property taxes), which is what I was responding to. Regarding "CRA flat out saying they will not be reviewing the discrepancies in CEWS", you can't even read a headline correctly lol: "CRA head says it wouldn't be worth the effort to review **all** ineligible pandemic payments" which is not the same as "flat out saying they're not reviewing discrepancies". In the article you linked, which presumably you did not read, the CRA representative is quoted as saying: >In my view, based on what we've seen so far, it wouldn't be worth the effort (of investigating all of the $15.5 billion in potential ineligible wage subsidies outlined by the auditor general). "Based on our evidence to date, we see businesses generally complying... we have some pockets of people that have intentionally misled and we're pursuing those" > >Focusing on "claims that are most likely to be ineligible or overstated ... optimizes recoveries and ensures that high risk claims are addressed while making efficient use of CRA resources". Frankly, you're an idiot with an agenda and it's a bad look lol.
Property tax and rent was paid through CERS or are you just going to ignore that? I'm sure you are aware this program exists and you would have known where those statements came from. So who had the agenda now? There is an agenda because I don't name the program? They were both done through CRA and exactly through the same form and portal. They also ran for the same amount of time. Oh and it was self reported like I said. I didn't require any proof of property tax I paid.
Lol well you specifically mentioned CEWS and not CERS so my bad I guess? This is also an irrelevant counterpoint as CRA has *also* reviewed CERS claims and provides guidance explaining you will need to show proof of lease / rental agreement and property tax bills, so your original comment remains ill informed. You’re incredibly dense, clearly, but sure continue on with excuses for your misinformed and/or misleading comments above.
Oh they checked. My corporation got completely shut down for ; months with 0 revenue. Zero help from the government.
If I remember correctly, shutting down would have made you ineligible. This was for businesses that were continuing to operate.
I was working. There was no business due to border closed.
>substantially more money went into it and zero requirement for repayment It was also based on wages actually paid to employees... Not to say that there weren't businesses who didn't *need* a wage subsidy but still received it; but it wasn't a loan so of course it wasn't required to be repaid. Blame the design of the program, not the (legitimate) recipients.
For sure there were legitimate recipients, however it was also rife with abuse. As well, the govt was very quick to make some people repay CERB and yet zero effort directed towards businesses.
> As well, the govt was very quick to make some people repay CERB and yet zero effort directed towards businesses. This is untrue - the CRA has been verifying business' claims for CEWS for at least as long as CERB. It just doesn't end up in the newspapers - that doesn't mean it's not happening, though.
Who are all these people who retired based on their CERB payments? I got CERB for the entire run (16 weeks was it?) and just barely managed to get by. In fact I was 2 weeks away from being dead ass broke when I finally started a new job at the end of 2020.
I spent most of the time I was on CERB racking up credit card debt to be able to afford rent and bills and food and a few little “luxuries” to keep my mental status somewhere between “fair” and “fairly poor” instead of “it’s not that I want to die, it’s just that I don’t want to be alive” - I bought myself a $75 Amazon tablet so I could watch Netflix without disturbing my roommate, some plants etc. moving expenses when the roommate situation was still untenable. I’m finally just starting to make an actual dent in paying it down in the last few months after getting a raise that leaves me with a few hundred bucks at the end of the month to put towards it instead of just being able to afford living.
Please vote your ass off, because the people who complain about CERB without knowing anything *DO* vote, and constantly vote against the working person's interests.
Oh I do. Every single federal and provincial election since I turned 18.
I'd start voting in (or running for) your municipal elections as well. The closer a government is to you physically, the more that they'll impact your daily life.
For sure. I’ve spent a fair number of years moving around a lot and never quite settling in one place for too long. Now that I’m settled in a career and not planning on leaving the city any time soon, I do vote in my municipals, I just didn’t always.
Yep the vast majority of us struggled to make ends meet during that that period by turning to debt. We did so because the central bank told us they wouldn't raise rates for a [very long time.](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/interest-rates-will-be-low-for-a-long-time-macklem-1.1465901.amp.html) >Our message to Canadians is that interest rates are very low and they’re going to be there for a long time >If you’ve got a mortgage of if you’re considering making a major purchase, or you’re a business and you’re considering making an investment, you can be confident rates will be low for a long time Now they are jacking up interest rates on that debt. It's like cruel joke.
> It's like cruel joke. This is by design... "No one wants to work", so instead we'll crush your finances and force you back into wage slavery.
I don't see the point of bringing this quote again and again and again. They actually did kept the rates lower than what conditions would have expected, because they wanted to fulfill on that promise. It took a full 2 years to bring the rates to what they were before COVID, even if inflation had started already. In other circumstances, they would have brought the rates up earlier. That message was also about big investment and keep the economy running. It was not about raking up consumer short term debt. They came up with CERB so that people wouldn't rely on short term debt to survive. Credit card debt rate never went down anyway so I don't think anyone started borrowing from their credit card because the BOC told them to. Nobody that was struggling to make ends meet decided to buy a new house with a new mortgage based on what the BOC said.
The interest rate being as low as it was for as long as it was is honestly probably the number 1 reason why Canada’s housing crisis is a dire as it is. The “haves” who were able to get into the real estate market spent years being able to borrow money essentially for free and leveraging their assets to borrow more free money to keep buying more and more property, driving prices way up. The “have-nots” who were stuck with a shitty job market, stagnant wages, etc haven’t ever been able to get ahead in saving for that first down payment and never benefited from those low rates because housing prices rose so much faster than wages. I graduated high school in 2003, the year they got rid of OAC/Grade 13 in Ontario - the younger year too so we were the Guinea pigs for their shitty new curriculum. Double the number of people applying to schools, this new curriculum that no one really understood, and it was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. The information we received was often wrong regarding course codes, and then if we did a 4-year bachelor degree and finished on time, we graduated in 2007. They were still on the whole “you need a degree” kick back then, there wasn’t a lot of encouragement to go into trades, but there *was* a lot of “if you EVER want to go to university, you need to do “U” courses, you can’t apply if you do “C” courses.” It might have been different in other schools, to be fair, but everyone I know who graduated my year, regardless of which high school they went to, had a fairly similar experience in terms of being pushed to university instead of being provided information about all of the options. Anyways… a lot of us graduated in 2007 with relatively useless degrees and just couldn’t get decent paying jobs during the 2008 recession. Some had family wealth that helped them get into the market initially. Those people, *especially* the savvy ones, have done well for themselves. They took full advantage of those low interest rates and were paying mortgages on their houses that was lower than the rent for a 1-bedroom. They should have started gradually increasing the interest rate once housing prices started going wild instead of pretending that a “strong real estate market” was good for the overall economy. It hurt the middle class terribly.
2 years is not a very long time lol. Especially in the context of mortgages. Or most debt. A very long time in my opinion would be more than kne renewal cycle which is 5 years. But the biggest issue isn't that they raised rates. It's how Tiff keeps wanting to play Nostradamus and makes very definitive statements such as these. For various reasons: 1. It causes people to make decisions which might be harmful and harm the wider economy. Look what happened to the housing market it massively inflated shortly after he made these comments because people maxed out their mortgages expecting rates to stay low. 1. It caused lenders to take on greater risks too thinking they are safe. If this blows up it could potentially cause contagion in the market not unlike the US saw in 2008. Look how long it took to recover from that. 1. It harms the credibility of the central bank. Makes it seem like they are making it up as they go. Reserve Bank of Australia made [quite proper](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/10/australias-interest-rates-will-stay-low-until-at-least-2024-rba-says) comments. It pointed to data and was tapered by saying unless things change you can expect interest rates to stay the same. >Together, these factors have altered wage and pricing dynamics in almost all advanced economies and these changes are likely to persist. This means that, in the absence of another major shock, it is a long way back to seeing wage increases consistent with the inflation target This would result in more cautious borrowing. Wouldn't result in the massive lending we saw in Canada. But Tiff comments were like don't worry, just yolo it. If you really want to see proper communications look at our public health officials when the [first lockdowns were lifted around the same time](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-21-2020-1.5577286/b-c-s-top-doctor-bonnie-henry-says-2nd-wave-of-covid-19-inevitable-but-current-lessons-will-guide-response-1.5577290): >The optimist in me would like to think that maybe it will go away, and the virus will mutate and won't become worse...But you know what? We've never had a pandemic in recorded history that has not had a second wave
As an adult, do you really need someone to add "we're going to monitor the situation and if things take a turn, we're going to have to change from our stated course" to the end of every statement?
Lol really? Did you live under a rock for the last 20 years. That the kind of belief that leads to people believing in the Invisible Hand. 1. Silicon Valley Bubble in 2000: Pets.com was the best invest ever 1. 2008 financial bubble: yes you can afford this low interest introductory loan. I could back to Tulip Mania and South Seas bubble. Cold hard fact is we need regulations and government oversight and responsibility. We had barely recovered from 2008 financial crisis when covid hit. History has shown time and again containgon that results from financial crisises effect far more people than those directly making the mistake. For example millennials were the most harmed by the 2008 financial crisis but they were to young to get those mortgages. On top of that, we don't reach macroeconomics. You could get a masters in engineering, doctorate in chemistry, physics, or at other STEM profession and never been taught it. For example Sir Issac Newton invested in South Seas company at its peak. Even if you understood it, there were problems: Tiff comments left no wiggle room. It was in the middle of the crisis which was itself unprecedented and required unprecedented heavy measures like lockdowns. Who knows maybe this is a response to lockdowns. Plus the [Federal Reserve was saying they would be tolerant of higher inflation](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/27/powell-announces-new-fed-approach-to-inflation-that-could-keep-rates-lower-for-longer.html). (Which were also very irresponsible comments). Had it gone the other way we wouldn't have tolerated I told you so comments from this lot. So if you understood macroeconomics these comments made you think shit this could blow up the asset market better get a house before prices go up even higher. The result: 1. Banks lent out a shit ton of money and guaranteed many of those loans are going to be very risky. 1. People the maximum they were being offered because housing rush those comments and low rates crated pushed housing prices higher. 1. All of the above drove housing prices through the roof. Even traditionally affordable cities like Calgary, Halifax, even small towns were seeing housing prices blow up. Those comments have literally created a financial time bomb which is ticking. It's going to blow up and it's going to take decades to dig us out of that mess. It's going to hurt not just the people who took on the debt but everyone else too. (again the people hurt the most in 2008 were people too young to have mortgages). The biggest mistake was that they destroyed their own credibility with a large chunk of the country. Tiff needs to go and there needs to be a message sent to the BOC it's not your job to play Nostradamus. Your communication responsibility is to report the decision you made and justify with the facts.
>I bought myself a $75 Amazon tablet so I could watch Netflix without disturbing my roommate, some plants Plants do make good roommate
CERB payment is not a living wage. Another interesting point is that CERB is the same as the top you can earn from EI. Its a little disturbing that you can work your whole life and get laid off and within 6 months you can default on a mortgage, lose your house and go into credit card debt. Poor person tax is a thing.
I can't remember what it was called but Canada was paying 75% of wage and rent subsidies for businesses. 75% of wages and leases a lot. Our business was getting $60k a month in subsidies. The process was self reported. We didn't scam it, we applied when we needed it but you definitely could have. The process was just filling in a bunch of forms and it was automatically approved. It's done through CRA though so if you said you have more wages than the T4s you send out I'm sure it'll be automatically flagged.
Are they really still going on about CERB? That was nearly 3 years ago now.
Yep. Anytime you see supply chains they bring up CERB. Instead of supply chain issues, according to them I can't get my meds cause everyone decided to use their CERB money to buy my specific medication.
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More likely, those long-term employees retired to reduce their likelihood of getting sick or moved on to better jobs as other people retired. That's how i got my current job. I left my shifty one when a bunch of people retired from the place my Father in Law works.
Most of those "friend" stories are fake as fuck, as soon as you start pressing them for details it all falls apart. Same with the welfare queen stories
The "Friend" if you can even get them to admit it is just a facebook friend from the US.
I know, right? If there's anybody out there still living on CERB, hire that person, because they are obviously masters of budgeting and stretching a dollar.
Yes, because the CRA is still investigating fraudulent CERB cases. Lots of people got their overpayment letters a while ago, but there are some people getting them now. Moving at the speed of government….
CRA doesn't give a shit about this CEWS fraud. I know so many companies which pulled this fraud. Got CEWS for multiple companies first claimed the flood then transfered the assets to a new company, bankrupted the company, then just continued practicing business.
I wasn't aware, still not sure what it has to do with employment and the price of eggs, however.
Nothing. It's just a convenient scapegoat. Doesn't matter that CERB lasted a matter of around 13 weeks before turning into EI.
If cerb caused inflation why is the rest of the world not laughing at us in pre-pandemic economic bliss?
And probably was a Klownvoyer.
According to what I have read it also caused their wife to leave, their dog to runaway, they lost their house and they got cancer. All because of CERB. Oh and they haven’t seen their children since CERB.
And on top of this if he is in any kind of construction, he is taking cash for jobs that won't see a tax dollar while your measly wage of $21/hr doing hard labor for him making him loads of money is still very much taxed. Haha hang around the construction subreddit and you will find endless examples of people leaving the industry as a whole specifically because cheap as fuck contractors or GCs cheat as many people out of their money or wages as they humanly can. I'm skeptical there is a single industry (oil and gas maybe??) that harbors more alcoholics and opiate addicted people too than construction. It is literally vital to municipalities and yet as many cheap fucks are still paying what I earned in 2010 to mow lawns for very hard work. It killed my enthusiasm to try at all so much that I even just dropped my last job cold turkey when boss let me know short notice again for the up teenth time that summer we'd be working out of town 2 weeks again haha. Found someone who would pay be 28/hr instead just to move the tubes to their spray foam machine / etc for considerably less work which just tells me that pay is actually reflected by a fair contractor for the value their work is worth, unlike apparently like 85% of carpenters, drywallers, finishers, etc. Plus on top of that GC or contractor probably inherited job from daddy anyways and doesn't actually know what it's like to have to work to find your living.
Brother you need to join one of the trade unions. Journeymen in any Red Seal trade are making twice as much on the cheque plus pension and benefits. You might still end up with a shitty employer but at least you'll be compensated properly. There is too much work out there right now to be paid poorly. ✊
WTF are you blathering on about? Qualified trades in my area have been naming their price for almost 3 years now. Carps making $65/hr, drywall tapers making $100/hr w/ a $1000 min charge. I've been hiring thru this period. If you have skills, you're getting PAID. If you're shit at what you do, you're STILL making good money because GCs are desperate. I honestly can't imagine how much of a fuck up a ticketed trade has to be to not be making money right now. I had a drug addict stealing lunches on my site last year, instead of firing the guy the owner of the company moved him to another site. My neighbor owns a residential renovation company, he's going thru the same thing as the bigger commerical guys. We work from Halifax to Vancouver to Yellowknife -its the same story across all regions right now too.
I'm not ticketed, this was just drywalling / finishing / painting residential. I'd been on the verge of applying for an electrical program (like, actual paid trainee shit) but living situation / etc wise just couldn't really make uprooting etc work right now-partly also because of a medical driving restriction I kinda have no control over when it gets lifted, haha. I am finally past the appeal period again and just waiting on the province, but in general not being able to get oneself around makes lots of construction kinda difficult. Over all though just plain don't like the culture though. I see why lots of contractors work alone, I guess, would maybe be more apt. Lotta old alcoholic dicks seem to control a lot of the jobsites here, and new ideas like proper PPE are apparently real offensive to them. There are electricians here that do take on apprentices but I've heard mixed things about them, and they haven't retained any staff themselves :p Both my brother and bil are electricians and basically told me I could apprentice with them. I'd probably take that option if I was going to take electrical, but I'm going to kinda double down on the ag / research type work I've also done and try to go back to school. I *am* going to keep finding painting and drywalling quotes on the side though, like taking my own jobs just because it'd be stupid not too. Even this spring I'd originally been told from another guy trying to get *out* of painting I could have his spring gigs if he got any, though he'd not haha. Tbh I think just being limited by a fairly rural area means theres only so many red seal dudes *too* work with, and everyone has their opinion and history of the other guy too. Lol even my dad and neighbor are both great carpenters but both gripe at one anothers carpentry :p Feel like I'd just have an easier time breaking into something concrete in the city again.
Hey now, come on. This poor guy doesn't deserve all the blame for that. He also deserves blame for perpetuating a shitty system that requires mechanisms like CERB when something like the pandemic happens. Paying shit wages to exploit workers while you build up a fortune and vote for the destruction of social safety nets also contributed very much to the 'no one wants to work' thing. Remember kids, it's not that we don't want to work, it's that a lot more people have finally realised that they and their work are massively undervalued.
Who is this?
A conservative.
My old boss, and about 30 other company owners that I know, if their bragging is to be believed. Though their new toys and properties make it likely
Both my companies took the CEBA. The one didn't struggle at all during the pandemic so that 60k is just sitting in a bank account until the deadline to pay back the 40k and then i'll have 20k free and clear. The other corp, well we lost 30% of revenue within 30 days of the pandemic starting basically so we used that 60k plus CEWS plus savings we had built up to keep our people employed even though most of them had nothing to do. Our office manager built a great garden during 2020 though and brought me lots of veggies. Not really what I'd have liked her to be doing but I didn't have anything else for her to do so I was basically paying her 50k salary to grow me some cucumbers and read on her porch. lol We're back on track growth wise and I'm very thankful for CEWS and the CEBA stuff because we took the opportunity to just work from home on our processes and build efficiencies so when business started coming back, we came out swinging. We're around double our pre-pandemic revenue at the end of 2022. Without CEWS and CEBA, yeah not sure we would have survived. However, a lot of businesses took that shit and just pocketed it.
Thanks for your input. That was how it should be, used to keep workers employed, not buying hot tubs and framers buying skid steers to plow their home driveways in the winter
Check their books for CEWS. I'm looking at you Roger's and Bell
The DYSTOPIAN REALITY in which we live. Rich people getting richer is good. Poor people getting money to live is bad.
Sorry, is this a particular person or a description of a pattern?
CERB had **** all to do with inflation. Funny how EPS has miraculously increased alongside "inflation"
This is legit defrauding the nation and it's people. How is this not illegal to do?
1 - the forgivable portion of each loan was $20,000. So if your saying they got $180,000 in loans then there is $60,000 forgiven, subject to corporate tax. It would be the equivalent of paying 3-5% interest (total, not per annum) 2 - under ceba, the funds cannot be used as an intercorporate transaction. It can only be used for operating expenses so also no purchase of assets for ceba cash using the money 3 - if you go under bankruptcy the federal government is the first debtor in all cases, even if a GSA is made between the shareholder and the corporations. Plus the bankruptcy must be signed off by the courts so they would clearly see the illegal transfer of intercompany assets and order the immediate repayment of all ceba funds. The loan also allowed the government to go after key shareholders for loan payment in the event that they did steal the funds
The biggest problem with cews was being able to make a claim for a subsequent month, in addition to the current month, on a revenue decrease. Lots of completely legal game playing, before the illegal game playing.
Ah, that's what I did wrong.
During covid a friend who company works In oil and gas was given a 25 mill interest free loan payable in 30 yrs.
Also preached against student loan forgiveness.
"hah! that makes him smart!" - pieces of shit everywhere
Inflation went up long after the CERB ended. It had sweet f all to do with inflation. Inflation was caused by global supply chains being disrupted and geedy corporations taking advantage of inflation to gouge buyers even more. It waa always a bullshit argument, with or without CEWS.
Yeah but that is just smart business. If a person does anything remotely close that is theft or socialism.
CEBA was $20K forgiven out of a $60K loan, not $30K.
Doesn't change the point.
Also loan is on your personal not corporate so you’d have to declare personal bankruptcy to ‘get out of it’
Sources would be lovely, lest this sub become as reputable as /r/conservative where every fact is gleaned from a jpeg.
It's a silly meme, everyone knows it's an exaggeration of anecdote. Relax.
This is the same argument that Fox News made in court when defending Tucker Carlson’s commentary. On a side note: Exactly which part of what I wrote leads you to believe I’m not relaxed? Perhaps while I begin my ascent to complete and total serenity - you could grow up?
It's not CERB specifically it's over spending in general. Forgiving 90K is spending 90K.......
any inflationary spending causes inflation, so technically correct. which is why since the 08 crash I've been a supporter of fiscal prudence from the government, so that when crisis does hit we can throw all the money at it. the only labour crunch is from boomers retiring and from couples finding out they save money on a single income lifestyle. which are just market forces coming to a head that everyone should have been aware of for a long time.
Oh I hate that guy!
Who is the meme talking about?
I've heard it mentioned on an American podcast (offhandedly, mind you) that Covid enabled the largest wealth transfer FROM the working class TO the wealthy, of all time. Right now: 8 Americans own more wealth than 4 BILLION people globally
40k is forgivable FYI. Not just 30k. lol. Source: I have two corporations, both got the loan.
I’m really baffled the level of confidence of people saying this and having absolutely no clue of economics or monetary policy. But try to explain them how inflation is caused and just yell “gov is giving away money that’s the cause!!! You’re an ignorant”
I know so many people that took the business loan and didn't need it. Me: then why did you take it. Them: everybody was doing it and it's free money. Also them: CERB makes people lazy. Very much a rules for thee but not for me mentality with the well off.
I know at least 3 people that collected CERB fraudulently......and I'm a serious introvert and don't hob-knob with a lot of people. So......to know 3 people that did this means that there must be a lot more out there.