Heather Scoffield: Ingenuity and government aid will help. Politicizing public health guidance won’t

From its perch along the edge of the Rideau River, is making the most of a bad situation without making it worse.

The restaurant has invested heavily in heat lamps and coverings on its patios, of course, and customers can also rent a private fire pit, order up hot dogs, marshmallows and hot chocolate (with or without Baileys), and have a night out on the town — all within public health guidelines for orange-zone Ottawa. Live music too.

Take that, sub-zero temperatures!

Ingenuity will certainly go a long way in helping businesses on the edge weather the pandemic. Chelsea Skillen, manager at The Bridge Public House, believes it will work for them. But bold ideas won’t go far enough for many firms involved in food services, accommodation and tourism, now that the second wave shows signs of spiralling.

Premiers are getting an earful about the closures at hand, often from the very entrepreneurs who helped elect them. And they’re bending, adding dollops of politics to the public health recommendations that were supposed to rule the day. We’re seeing it in Ontario and Manitoba this week, and we’ve seen it in Quebec too — premiers who steer away from stringency only to have to walk back their lenient guidelines because they just aren’t strict enough to keep the virus at bay.

It’s short-sighted and disruptive, and it doesn’t have to be this way.

Fragile companies that are the lifeblood of our communities need more than ingenuity to get through to the other side of this crisis, but they certainly don’t need a counterproductive watering-down of public-health rules for the sake of politics.

There are many, many supports in place to sop up the hurt.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in government funding have been earmarked for individuals and businesses alike, structured so that they can scale back their economic activity to a safer level if need be.

on Friday that 54 per cent of businesses were drawing down on the Canada Emergency Business Account, and a third were using the federal wage subsidy to pay their employees. Those numbers were from August, when COVID-19 was in remission. Since then, the programs have been extended and enriched, meant to help the firms that have not been able to move online or crack the code of operating safely in the second wave.

The commercial rent subsidy has been completely overhauled, and there are now top-ups coming into place targeted specifically at areas heading toward lockdown.

On top of all that, the federal government has issued about $20 billion to the provinces so they can gear up for the second wave.

The point of it all was specifically so that premiers would not have to give in to pressure from companies to stay open and could focus instead on controlling the virus — which would in turn allow companies to reopen sooner rather than later.

But some of the provinces have been slow to spend the federal money. The rapid testing and contact tracing that was supposed to help businesses stay open are not in full swing, tied up in red tape and inadequate investment. And there are holes in some of the government funding that mean some companies are slipping through the cracks.

So it’s no surprise there is pressure on governments to be more lenient. But the responsible answer is to spend the money and fill the holes, not to waffle on public health restrictions as Premier Doug Ford has done this week.

At the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, chief economist Trevin Stratton says additional federal support targeted very narrowly at the hospitality sector would be affordable and smart. He also points to franchisees who can’t qualify for rent subsidies because they are part of a chain, despite operating like a small business.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business sees new companies without a track record left behind, as well as tiny firms often involving just one or a few people.

And struggling firms can’t really take on any more debt, having already overloaded on that, the Statistics Canada report suggests — which means more loans are not the best answer.

Those holes can be readily filled by flexible governments willing to lend a hand. Some firms will fail, but most of them should be able to scrape by if they have a clear idea of what to expect from governments and public health authorities, and if government support is sufficient and predictable.

Winter will be grim, says Stratton, and companies on the edge will need all the help they can get — plus a recognition that their own ingenuity and dedication to respecting public health guidelines can make customers safer.

Luck helps too, says Skillen at The Bridge Public House. They’re on four acres of land in the heart of the city and have a dedicated customer base that’s all in for eating outdoors, even in the cold.

“We’re going day by day, rolling with the punches.”

Heather Scoffield is the Star’s Ottawa bureau chief and an economics columnist. Follow her on Twitter: