December 8, 2022
Do you remember the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)? People who lost half their income because of Covid received $500 per week from the government. And the payments went on until October 2021. We are not talking about peanuts: the CERB costs $37 billion, benefitting over four million people. After October, half the people who received CERB transitioned to the Canada Recovery Benefit, which pays $300 per week.
We met two of these lucky people receiving CERB in 2020. They were training for a hike out west with heavy backpacks when we met them on a walk to where our cottage is. They stayed at the cottage their family-owned and told us they will use their money from the government to fly out west and hike the Pacific Coast Trail. Working was not the foremost in their minds. They were college students living at home and enjoying the family cottage during the summer.
Is there anything wrong with accepting government money for not working and enjoying life? If these students had to work to attend college, they would have had to take a job, possibly in the hospitality industry, where waiters and waitresses have been in great demand since Covid started. According to government statistics, a third of restaurants closed over the past two years, since Covid started. And these students working may have saved many restaurants from closing due to lack of staff.
An example of this scenario materialized with our visit to Denny’s restaurant. The franchisor and family served the busy breakfast period. They could hardly keep up with the steady line of people coming for breakfast. Our waiter told us nobody who worked there had come back since the government introduced CERB. He said that some previous waitresses told him they wanted to stay home because their income just did not match CERB payments. It was easy to understand why people would not work.
A similar situation played out in Montreal last week when we visited a brasserie on rue St. Paul, in Old Montreal, a historical and very popular place with tourists. I noticed after we were seated that a lineup formed outside where the restaurant people were checking vaccination passports of the visitors. More than half the tables were empty. So I asked the waitress why the people waiting were not let in. She explained she was the only waitress on this floor and they limited the number of people in the restaurant to what the waitresses could serve. I asked why not hire more people. She said that they tried, but nobody wants to work. A similar situation played out again at night when we went for dinner, again, in Old Montreal. One waiter served an entire floor, running his legs off. I have seen no studies linking CERB to restaurant closures. But personal experience shows that giving out government money can lead to people refusing to work when work is available. Is this a moral or ethical issue? Are Canadians becoming soft, looking for an easy life? Is the government encouraging people to stay away from work? Just asking.
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