Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS)

CERS is available for both renters and property owners. To determine if your business is eligible, you need to:

1. Own or rent a property that is:
   • real or immovable (not for domestic purposes); and
   • in Canada, used by your business for its ordinary activities
2. Have eligible rent expenses totalling no more than $75,000 per location per period and $300,000 per entity per period
3. Be an eligible entity, including a/an:
   • Individual
   • Taxable corporation or trust
   • Registered charity
   • Partnership of eligible employers
   • Non-profit organization
4. Have experienced a revenue loss during a CERS claim period
5. Have a payroll account as of March 15, 2020 (or have been using a payroll service provider) or have a business number (BN) as of September 27, 2020.

Note: Non-eligible properties include:

• residential properties such as your home or cottage used by you, your family or other non-arm’s-length persons
• properties you own that are primarily used to earn rental income from arm’s-length parties

Note: If your landlord received funding through CECRA, it does not impact your eligibility for the CERS.

Note:

• For renters: Only amounts paid or payable to an arm’s-length party are considered eligible expenses.
• For property owners: If you earned any revenue from sub-leasing space to arm’s-length parties, you must subtract that revenue from your eligible expenses.
• Expenses must fall within the claim period you are applying for. Note: the CERS calculator prorates eligible expenses to 28 days.
• Eligible rent expenses are limited to those under agreements entered into before October 9, 2020 and must be in writing.

• Sales tax (e.g. GST/HST)
• Amounts paid as, on account of, in lieu of payment of or in satisfaction of damages
• Amounts paid under a guarantee, security, or similar indemnity of covenant
• Payments arising due to default under the agreement by the eligible entity
• Interest and penalties on unpaid amounts
• Fees payable for infrequent items or special services, and
• Reconciliation adjustment payments

No. CERS is based on the amount payable (owed) in each claim period, NOT on the amount paid. However, you must attest to pay your rent bill within 60 days of receiving your CERS.

To calculate CERS, businesses will need to calculate their revenue loss and multiply this by a number determined by the government to calculate the amount of rent subsidy that they will receive. The calculation is as follows:

Those with up to 50% revenue loss will get 0.8 times their current revenue loss as a subsidy.

• For example, if your revenue loss is 50%, you will multiply this by 0.8 to receive a 40% rent subsidy.

Those with a revenue loss between 50% and 70% will get 40% plus 1.25 times the incremental amount of loss above 50%.

• For example, if your revenue loss is 60% you will get a CERS of 40% + (1.25x10%) = 52.5% rent subsidy.

Those with 70% or more revenue loss will receive a 65% rent subsidy.

Note: businesses required to shut down due to a public health order are eligible for a maximum 90% subsidy.

Use the following table to estimate your CERS:

Your will be eligible for an additional 25% top up if you business is forced to temporarily close or significantly restrict operations for one week or longer due to a COVID-19 related public health order.

The public health order must require you stop or restrict business activities. Restricted activities must account for at least 25% of total revenues at the relevant location during the prior reference period.

Example 1: A restaurant is required to close its dine-in service due to a public health order, but is allowed to remain open for take-out service. The restaurant’s dine-in revenues must have accounted for at least 25% of revenues during period 1 to be eligible for the top-up in period 2.

Example 2: A clothing retailer is required to completely close and therefore has no revenues for a given period. The retailers with receive the 65% subsidy, plus the 25% top-up for a total of 90% rent subsidy for the period(s) they are completely shut down

Restrictions that do not qualify your business for the top up:

• Requiring masks for staff and/or customers
• Restricted or reduced hours of operation (i.e. bars and pubs required to close before midnight)
• Seating capacity limits or physical distancing requirements

Revenues for the CERS are calculated in the same way they are for the CEWS. To calculate your revenue drop, you can choose one of the following two baseline revenue options:

• General approach: compare your business eligible revenue for the claim period month in 2020 you are applying for with your eligible business revenue for the same month in 2019; OR
• Alternative approach: compare your business eligible revenue for the claim period month in 2020 you are applying for with your average eligible business revenue for the months of January and February 2020

You will have to determine whether the relationship between property owner and tenant/subtenant is at arm’s length or non-arm's length because it will change the amount of subsidy you are eligible for.

Non-arm’s length relationships can be more simply viewed as family, significant others, partnerships, or businesses where one partner has controlling interest/voting shares.

Arm’s-length relationships can be viewed as any other individuals or corporations that are treated without preference, and with no blood, trust or controlling relationship.

Should you still be uncertain if your relationship is not at arm’s length, check CRA’s website.

An affiliated entity is an organization that directly or indirectly controls another entity. An example of this would be a parent company or a subsidiary company.

The missed rent from May to September is not included in this program. CFIB continues to advocate to make this available to those who have fallen through the cracks of support.

To prepare, ensure that you have access to your MyBA or Represent a Client and that the appropriate people who deal with this information (those applying on the business’ behalf) have the proper authorities. Before you start your application, you should have your:

• monthly qualifying revenue amounts from 2019 and 2020
• the eligible expenses broken down by business location
• property address
• name and contact information for your
  • mortgage holder (for property owners)
  • landlord (for renters)
• Affiliated entities will also require:
  • Number of affiliated entities in the agreement
  • Percentage assigned to you under the agreement with your affiliated entities
  • Business number of each affiliated entity
  • Percentage assigned to each affiliated entity under the agreement

• Direct deposit: 3-8 days after filing your claim.

Cheque by mail: 7-17 days after filing your claim (mail service dependent). Ensure your address on your MyBA is up to date as this is where your cheque will be sent.

CRA will begin processing applications starting on November 30th, so the earliest CERS funds will be received on December 4th.

CERS will replace the CECRA, which ended on September 30, 2020 for new applications and October 30th for extensions. Should you have received CECRA funding this will not impact your CERS. For more information on the CECRA program, view our previous CECRA FAQ. Please note that the program is no longer available, meaning that our FAQ are no longer being updated.