“We’re ecstatic that we can open, but at the same time, we’re frustrated,” explains Phil Karpathios, who can begin welcoming customers back inside his restaurants (Phil’s Casual Dining in Penetanguishene and Phil’s Pub & Eatery in Midland) today as part of stage three reopening measures.
While he says the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) may have been a sound government response when much of the country’s businesses were closed or working at lesser capacity during the pandemic’s early days, it’s now causing an adverse effect as restaurants and other businesses struggle to find employees with many of those temporarily laid off in March now opting not to return to work even as their employers need them.
“They’ll say they don’t feel comfortable coming back,” Karpathios says, adding other restaurant owners as well as people he knows in the retail and construction sectors are experiencing similar issues.
“But really it’s like ‘I’m not going to go work for you at 15 bucks an hour, 30 hours a week, when I can sit on my ass at home and get 500 bucks a week.’ Now that you can operate your business, there are no wheels on the carts.”
Karpathios said the government needs to step in and do something to help small businesses now by curbing CERB abuse, especially since it’s appealing to those receiving $2,000 a month to take the summer off.
“There are no brakes on the program,” he says, noting the government didn’t ensure that once people could go back to work, they would.
“People don't want to come to work. So now we're at risk of not being able to operate our business because we have no staff. Now, it’s like they think I'm not gonna bust my balls in the kitchen, I'm not gonna go out there and work hard.
“And, you know, I've accommodated all my staff. Nobody was laid off. They were number one on my list.”
Simcoe North MP Bruce Stanton says he has heard similar complaints about the benefit and its effect on the business community.
“For the people who started on CERB on March 15, they reached the end of their 16 weeks on July 4,” Stanton says, noting the government approved an extension for up to eight more weeks and applicants must now attest that they have not been asked back to work by their employer and/or they continue to look for employment.
“There are penalties for making incorrect attestations on these applications,” Stanton says. “All this is in the hope of encouraging CERB recipients to get back to work. Also, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) has been extended until December, in the hopes that workers can get to work via the CEWS and their employer – is much better oriented toward bringing workers back than CERB.”
Stanton says that one of the disadvantages of CERB in its current format, is that as soon as one earns $1,000 in a four-week period, the person loses 100 percent of the CERB benefit.
“It would be better if the government changed the format so that as you earn more through employment, the CERB benefit merely reduces in proportion to your earnings instead of completely disappearing, as it does now, when employment goes over $1,000,” Stanton adds.
“Opposition MPs have proposed such an approach but so far, the government has not indicated it is willing to change to one that incentivizes employment rather than act as a disincentive.”
Karpathios, meanwhile, says that with the new protocols in place regarding sanitizing and cleaning, he now needs even more staff to ensure everything is done properly.
“There's more work to be done,” he says, noting staple items on a table like salt and pepper and condiments have to be removed after each customer and wiped down.
“Every time after building the table, you're dismantling the table and then you're building the table again. You’re spraying the chairs and tables.”
As well, Karpathios said he’s still not sure closing restaurants early on was a sound idea.
“I kind of feel that we could have been open inside with lower capacity right from the get go,” he says, “because there was less risk to come in here and eat than going to a grocery store and buying apples that had been touched by 100 other people.”
That said, he says his restaurants remained busy by offering lower prices, take-out delivery and front-line specials.
“I did some community stuff. I did some free dinners at the hospital and lunches,” Karpathios says. “My sales, the first two weeks of COVID, which was like the first two weeks in March and the first week of April, were down 95 percent.
“We did all these specials. We did a lot of social media. All of a sudden I brought my sales up to almost 70 percent of what I used to do with a lower margin because there were no alcohol sales.”
And while restaurants received a break with hydro costs over the past few months as the province did away with peak use hours, Karpathios says that wasn’t the case with suppliers.
“As an example," he says, "a box of bacon was $32 at one point and it went up to 72 bucks. And I was selling breakfast for $6.79. I almost felt like saying to customers, ‘look, I’ll give you a dollar not to order bacon.’”
