OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada will extend an emergency wage subsidy program for another three months to the end of August to help firms retain employees during the coronavirus outbreak, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday.
The program is already budgeted to cost C$73 billion ($51.8 billion), or just under half the entire value of all the direct spending Ottawa has unveiled to help businesses and firms cope with the disruption caused by major shutdowns.
Only firms which have seen a drop in revenues of 30% or more are eligible for the subsidy, a threshold that Trudeau told reporters the government was reviewing.
Although some of Canada’s 10 provinces have started to slowly reopen their economies, he said extreme caution was needed to avoid a second wave of infections.
The total death toll edged up by 3% to 5,499 from Thursday, the public health agency said. The increase was one of the smallest daily advances since the crisis broke.
Trudeau also said Ottawa would spend C$450 million to help researchers and research institutions deal with the disruption caused by the crisis.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Kelsey Johnson; Editing by Chris Reese and Andrea Ricci)
