Ontario’s public health measures may have slowed down the spread of COVID-19, but they have also had a huge impact on people’s lives and their ability to make a living. In the case of the self-employed, many had not paid into the Employment Insurance (EI) program and had to apply for government benefits to stay afloat. For a good number of them, benefits such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) have been their only source of income in the months since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. As summer drew to a close and the days got shorter, many lay awake at night with a nagging sense of impending doom.
Fortunately, the government put forward legislation in September, which introduced three new temporary Canada Recovery Benefits aimed at providing income support to Canadian workers while promoting economic recovery. These new recovery benefits are the:
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