Canada Emergency Response Benefit – Huge Gap for Canadians – Who Does Not Qualify?

Monday, April 6th marks the day that the applications opened to allow for Canadians to apply for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. But there are 2 very large and significant groups of people who are being excluded from this benefit, at this time.  

When I went on to the site, good news, it did not crash, and the application was not much of an application. I assume based on the question criteria that this is going to be an automated approval process on the Government of Canada side.  

Although hundreds of thousands will qualify there are two large groups of people that do not qualify at this time.

The First group involves many self-employed small business owners. These are the people that are questioning what to do as their income has drastically been hit by COVID-19 but not 100% eliminated. Possibly you have 2 jobs, work part-time or have some income coming in from say a project or commission that was earned before but received now or maybe you can earn a bit of income through a creative way online.

The criteria are that you cannot earn any income at all. So, if this is you, you are not eligible for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. The government said they are assessing how to help but that this is a huge gap for a lot of Canadians who have lost a significant amount of income but can still earn a small amount every month.  

The best I can advise right now is that if you fall into this category and can earn some income now that you should not apply at this time.

The second group of people are Students.  

Another criteria is that you must have stopped working due to COVID-19. There are many students out there that were finishing finals this month and then had job offers.

This group of people does not qualify as one of the criteria is that you must have stopped working, not lost your job offer. Trudeau has stated that a Student program is being considered and only time will tell if there will be an income subsidy program for them.  

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