Province offering more business grants

Dale Woodard

Lethbridge Herald

With the latest health measures now in place, the Alberta government is reaching out to small businesses with another round of grants.

The Alberta government is offering small businesses affected by the most recent public health orders another payment of up to $10,000 from the Small and Medium Enterprise Relaunch Grant (SMERG).

Alberta businesses affected by the latest public health orders will be eligible to apply for another payment in the second half of this month for those that meet the criteria.

The updated SMERG program replaces the previously announced Enhanced COVID-19 Business Benefit and will provide funding to more businesses facing increased public health measures as announced on April 6.

The additional payment will also be available to new businesses that began operating between March 1, 2020 and March 31 of this year, as well as hotels, taxis and ride-sharing services.

“With the enhanced health measures that were brought into place a week ago we knew we had to bring in further business supports for small businesses across Alberta that we’re asking to make sacrifices for all of us to keep us healthy,” said Doug Schweitzer, Minister of Jobs, Economy and Innovation. “So we put in place another tranche of the relaunch brand of up to $10,000 payments to small business across Alberta that have seen a drop in revenue of 30 per cent.

“The reason for this program now is we were originally going towards reopening and we’ve put in place an enhanced COVID-19 business benefit for the very reason we’re asking certain businesses to wait until Stage 3 or Stage 4 to open. Now that we’ve brought in further health measures we’ve had to expand other programs.”

The relaunch grant program has already had nearly 50,000 applicants, with total program costs of more than $500 million. With this latest expansion, small businesses that have qualified for all three rounds will have received as much as $30,000.

“We did $5,000 in summer of last year and as we went into the winter and we had the second wave of the pandemic there was another tranche of $15,000 and that program ended at the end of March,” said Schweitzer. “Now we’re opening up a third round of relaunching grants of up to $10,000 for a $30,000 total between those three tranches.”

Applications received before the previous program closure on March 31 will continue to be processed, while companies that did not apply under the first run of SMERG will not be able to apply for the initial payments and only the new $10,000 payment.

Money received under SMERG does not need to be repaid.

Funds can be used, for example, to cover costs of items that help prevent the spread of COVID-19, such as personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies, pay rent, employee wages or replace inventory or help businesses expand their online presence or e-commerce opportunities so they can continue to serve customers.

“These funds are available for businesses to use to help keep the lights on and get them through to the other side of the pandemic,” said Schweitzer. “So businesses will use it for personal protective equipment and other businesses will use it for employee wages and help keep them open during the pandemic. It’s really up to each business.

“We want to give them the best possible flexibility to use the funds to keep them alive until the other side of this pandemic.”

Schweitzer said the government budgeted for about $575 million in the first two rounds of the program.

“We believe the uptake will be about $630 million for the first two rounds. So we’ve budgeted for this third tranche and additional $350 million. So it’s almost a billion dollars total that we’ve budgeted for all the relaunch grants.”

The program is scheduled to be open for applications until May 31 and is capped at $350 million.

Businesses can visit https://www.alberta.ca/sme-relaunch-grant.aspx to apply.

In response to Tuesday’s announcement, Lethbridge mayoral candidate and local business owner Bradley Whalen has been reaching out to local small business owners to write letters to Alberta premier Jason Kenney so Whalen can compile them and send them to the premier’s office.

“I’m also encouraging any and all of you, if you’re experiencing losses due to these lock downs (save) invoices and attach those invoices to these letters so we can serve them to the Province of Alberta,” said Whalen in an emailed statement. “Make the invoices out to The Alberta Government and the UCP Caucus. Please feel free to drop these off to Coco Vanilla on 3rd Ave.”

In his statement, Whalen put things in prespective for his own business.

“My costs to operate for the last five days was $3,300 our sales were $680. How long could your business balance those numbers? Let’s work together and create a voice for all of Lethbridge. One that can remind people that we are still here. That we are still struggling and that enough is enough.”

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