Long Blog 4 – The Impact

COVID-19, which is commonly known as the coronavirus, is impacting the daily lives of the citizens in Toronto. Ever since March 23th, following Premier Doug Ford’s declaring for the state of emergency for Ontario on March 17th, non-essential services have been shut down in order to slow the spread of the virus. So a lot of small businesses were forced to close their doors since then.

It is reported by the Toronto Star (Source 1) that the situation has been rough for small businesses. The shops that changed the face of the neighbourhood are now at risk. Stores around the street corner such as coffee shops or local food spots are struggling the keep up the rent. As the landlords were already willing to leave their commercial units vacant before the pandemic, the COVID-19 could just pave a path to kick out some tenants who can not afford the rent anymore. It is stated by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business that ‘32 percent of their business members who have closed due to the pandemic aren’t sure if they’ll be able to reopen.’

The same issue of rent was also reported by the CBC News (Source 2). John Shell, who is the co-founder of the advocacy group Save Small Business (SSB), stated that the government needs to make plans to relieve rent instead of just providing loans to some of the small business owners who were already in debt. He said that:

“We have to share the burden of rent in a way so that the tenant isn’t the only one responsible,”

as tenants have become angry that loan is the only option to pay the rent since the closure of the shops. Right now, Shell is working to push the government to acknowledge this problem before thousands of local businesses close permanently.

But on the other side of the story, the landlords are also facing a face a financial crunch as the small business tenants can’t pay the rent(Source 3). A member of the Ontario Landlord Association named William Blake said that:

“We need a new deal to save tenants and to keep them in business and in their stores; otherwise, they will be in a bad situation, and the landlords will be next to follow and it will harm the entire economy.”

Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has conducted a survey of 10,500 small business owners, and the results showed that only 18% of them are currently still open. And that number is only going to keep dropping as the pandemic continues to get worse (Source 4). Another thing that was hurting the small business even before they were forced to shut down and still to this day was the social distancing rule. Because a lot of the shops run on face-to-face sales bases, so they rely heavily on human interactions. And with the new rule, not only the number of people in the shop at the same time is limited, but the amount of people who are willing to go to the local shops has also dropped. Moreover, most of the small shops do not have the online capability, so it became even harder to make a living as the income could drop to zero (Source 5).

However, even during this difficult time, Torontonians are still showing love and supporting each other. Fragola, who runs a small baby food start-up in North York, is sending families in need of free baby food. She started the movement in mid-March and over a thousand families have received food since then (Source 6).

So what can we do to help small businesses? I would recommend two easy methods. One is to use the website Distantly.ca, which received high praise from Toronto Mayor John Tory, to donate to your choice of local business (Source 7). Or another way is maybe to order take-outs using apps like Uber Eats or SkipTheDished from the local restaurants. Everyone is involved in this global pandemic, and support to each other is what we needed to get through this together.

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