COVID-19 Advocacy Hub
The Prime Minister’s Office recently released supplementary mandate letters, which included a commitment to ensure that charities and nonprofits have the tools that they need to modernize as they emerge from the pandemic to support the Government’s overall agenda in a manner that responds to the needs of Canadians in every region. We applaud this official signal of the Government’s commitment to sector policy needs.
UPDATES AND RESOURCES
The sector has been advocating for relief measures to help charities and nonprofits weather COVID-19, and we're starting to see results. We've created a summary of Federal Government COVID-19 programs that apply to the sector, and will regularly update it as more programs are announced.
The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) is a part of the Government of Canada’s COVID-19 Economic Response Plan. It is intended to help employers keep employees on the payroll and encourage employers to re-hire workers previously laid off by providing eligible employers with a wage subsidy.
The Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS) is a new program that will provide businesses, charities, and nonprofits with a subsidy that could cover up to 90% of eligible fixed property expenses, including rent and interest on commercial mortgages.
LATEST ADVOCACY EFFORTS
As part of the latest pre-budget consultations launched by Federal Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland, we submitted a brief to highlight our recommendations for the charitable and nonprofit sector.
In the last few months, Imagine Canada hosted 2 convenings with 30+ charitable and nonprofit organizations to discuss how federal COVID-19 supports – mainly the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS) – could be improved, and what resources and initiatives would help more organizations access much-needed relief. Here is what attendees told us.
Imagine Canada is proud to have collaborated with others to recommend federal policy measures we feel can accelerate the recovery towards a more inclusive, green and prosperous future.
Resetting Normal is a series of reports on gender equality and the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. The series explores risks to human rights exposed by the pandemic and proposes new ways to build a gender-equal Canada in pandemic recovery efforts. The first in the series focuses on how long-term underfunding has left the women’s sector without adequate resources to carry out its important work. The Report was co-authored by the Canadian Women’s Foundation, the Ontario Nonprofit Network, The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and Kathleen Lahey, with contributions from Imagine Canada.
Stories of how COVID-19 is affecting your organization help demonstrate, to the public and government, the breadth and diversity of the challenges our sector faces. Together, we can make advocacy efforts more powerful to get the help that our sector is in dire need of.
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