MONTREAL -- Beth Cytryn runs an NDG-based home-care service for the elderly and she says she’s having a hard time keeping her staffing levels up—because of CERB payments.
"There are a lot of people that cannot come back to work, but there are also the individuals that have become very comfortable staying home and are not ready to come back to work because they are collecting this benefit,” says Cytryn.
It’s a complaint lodged by employers across the country: that many workers who were earning minimum wage are now collecting the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit instead and are reluctant to return to work.
After warning of this problem for months, a business owners' group wants the government to make workers prove they can’t return to work in order to get the payments.
The CERB adds up to $2,000 a month, for a limited time. But Ottawa recently extended CERB until the end of August.
After a survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business circulated to thousands of employers, the federation reported that more than a quarter of them have staff that won’t return even though there’s work for them.
"CERB does not incentivize people to go back to work,” said Jasmin Guenette of the CFIB.
Small businesses say CERB was meant as an emergency stopgap, not to fund people’s summer breaks. But more importantly, they say they are struggling to run their businesses.
They want the federal government to take note.
“CERB should not be some sort of a social program,” said Guenette. “We should initiate changes to CERB so that we move people out of the program and move people to the workforce again."
Watch the full report in the video above.
