Have you come across the news regarding CEBA loans for small businesses recently?

Imagine for a moment, shopping in a vibrant city like Kingston for a gift or a product necessary for the safety of your child. You want expert guidance, a warm and welcoming atmosphere, & locally-made items that most directly benefit your community. You might even get to use active transportation like walking or cycling to visit this real place, filled with friendly faces that know your name & remember your conversations from prior visits.

In this dream scenario, you don't have to go online or trek to a distant big-box store, where a significant portion of every dollar you spend vanishes into the pockets of a billionaire CEO; at the expense of both the underpaid workers who make those products & your community.

While this vision is partly our reality today, it is fragile & facing unprecedented challenges.

This serious tone & subject matter aren’t our usual, we know. We also know many families are facing financial hardships & stress. We come to social media for an escape. But we also come here to connect & help each other. We believe it is vital for more people to understand the current reality of small businesses and local economies. With that said, have you come across the news regarding CEBA loans for small businesses recently?

We are one of the businesses affected by this issue & we see it as an environmental issue as much as it is an economic one. There will be family-run businesses devastated without a ✨reasonable✨ extension & it will permanently change the landscape of local communities and economies. More online & big-box shopping is NOT the answer to the climate emergency. Whether your favourite small shops needed to take these loans or not, we all need your support now more than ever.

Our mission is simple: People, planet, profit. That's the order in which we prioritize our goals. We understand that this makes us vulnerable in the business world. But capitalism’s exponential growth is not sustainable. It’s one of the major causes of the climate emergency we are passing on to future generations.

🛍️ Remember to spend your time, money, & energy with the small businesses that make you feel seen and heard!

The backstory in a nutshell: small businesses, out of financial necessity during the 2020 lockdowns, could receive a government loan with a forgivable portion, provided the loan portion could be repaid by the end of the forgiveness repayment period. The loan forgiveness repayment date was extended this fall from Dec 31 to Jan 18. But an 18-day extension feels like an unreasonably insensitive joke when discussing such large sums of money.

According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses (CFIB), the largest body advocating for the survival of small businesses, “Only half of small firms are back to 2019 levels of sales and the average business has taken on $100,000 in new debt just to survive.”

The question that lingers, as Dan Kelly, President of the CFIB puts it: “If Ottawa can find billions of funding for giant multinational car companies in the matter of weeks, surely it can allow Canada’s small businesses more time to repay a loan they were forced to take on just to survive the pandemic.”

The pandemic showed us that we can pause, take care of each other, and allow the Earth to breathe. We don't have to move forward with fewer choices; we can design the future we want to see, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges. We can demand peace, clean water, air & soil, and a viable future for generations to come.

Want to help?! Here are some action steps you can take!

🧮 Are you a small business owner? We could use your help by adding your voice of support through the CFIB petition here: https://cfib.ca/cebapetition

🇨🇦 Are you a Canadian resident who would like your voice to be heard on this issue? Please sign the NDP lead petition here: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Sign/e-4624