Over the past 10 days federal and provincial governments and regulators have announced a dizzying array of measures to support workers and businesses. Some measures, like those introduced by the Bank of Canada and OSFI, are highly technical and designed to provide liquidity to ensure the smooth functioning of the economy. Other initiatives promise direct payments to workers under existing programs like EI, or create new programs for self employed and small business. Still other initiatives provide tax deferrals.
All are designed to support the economy through this demand shock by stimulating, or actually replacing, demand with direct subsidies. Major relief for specific industries is still on the table.
The gamble governments all over the world are taking is that stimulus measures will cover what is hoped will be a short-term (dramatic) drop in GDP (economic activity). Canada has the fiscal room to do what it has announced and more room still. However, no government has the capacity to maintain this level of stimulus (and printing money to make it so) without inviting comparisons to Weimar Germany.
The links below outline some of the major initiatives announced by the Federal and Ontario governments to-date. If you have any questions about the programs, or want help reaching out to government to talk about your sector or gaps in the programs, please contact anyone of the Campbell Strategies team.
Bank of Canada
Department of Finance
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/economic-response-plan.html
OSFI
https://www.osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/osfi-bsif/med/Pages/nr_20200313.aspx
Government of Ontario
For more information, please contact:
Barry Campbell: barry@campbellstrategies.com
Paul Brown: paulb@campbellstrategies.com
Chris Holz: chrish@campbellstrategies.com
Ted Griffith: tedg@campbellstrategies.com
Natalie Dash: ndash@campbellstrategies.com
Kevin Powers: kevinp@campbellstrategies.com