The Government of Canada has launched a new hotline service to provide small businesses with financial planning and advice on COVID-19 recovery.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the new service on Monday. The Businesses Resilience Service, as it is called, is available starting today.
A government spokesperson told BetaKit that the idea behind the offering is to provide support for “the smallest and most vulnerable business owners, particularly those who may not have access to an accountant.”
The Business Resilience Service will be available over the next four weeks and is run by advisors who can provide tailored financial advice to entrepreneurs, with the goal of helping them weather and recover from COVID-19.
The hotline is run in partnership with The Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
Minister of Small Businesses Mary Ng is set to provide more detail on the hotline later today.
The Government of Canada has implemented a number of measures for businesses as part of its COVID-19 Economic Response Plan. The measures, backed with federal funding, include the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance (applications opened today), wage subsidies including the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and a 10 percent wage subsidy, loans through the Business Credit Availability Program, the Regional Relief and Recovery Fund, and more.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has also partnered with Salesforce to launch the Canadian Business Resilience Network Small Business Relief Fund to offer $10,000 grants to 62 small Canadian businesses. The idea behind the fund is to help those businesses recover from the COVID-19 downturn.
The grants will be available to small, for-profit businesses that have been operating for several years and are experiencing challenges because of COVID-19. The application period will open on June 1 and close on June 12.
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