A restaurateur who was paid just $101 after paying around $2,000 in accounting fees to receive compensation from the city of Montreal denounces the bureaucratic cumbersomeness of a program put in place to compensate businesses affected by construction sites.
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Ghislain Prud’homme, owner of Agrigourmet on Sainte-Catherine Street East in the Hochelaga sector, is one of 18 people to have received compensation since last February.
“It cost me around $2,000 in accounting fees; It took three months to put the case together and they mailed me a check for $101. Ridiculous!” he denounces, showing the email the city sent him to that effect.
“The application is very complicated and they were stubborn about the documents. For example, the annual accounts for such and such a year were missing, which we then had to send back to them,” he added.
La Lorraine pastry shop owner Simon Fournier is also discouraged by the situation. In October 2021, he started the process to try to get financial support from the city. Since then he is still waiting.
“I have no news, no follow-up, no feedback, no confirmation. I have sent the requested forms with the required documentation, but I have no sign of life,” he lamented.
Julie Duquette, owner of Rock ‘N Ronde, who opened her shop during a pandemic time, regretted that her part was not eligible for the program. “You must have 5% losses on net profit. This is a new store opened during the pandemic. Win, I don’t have any,” she apologized.
With ongoing work on its artery, it lost an estimated 50% of its sales, which were already weak due to the pandemic.
A current program
Launched in January 2019, the program aims to help merchants located on a construction artery by offering them financial assistance that can reach up to $40,000 per “fiscal year.”
However, of 314 applications received since the implementation of the grant program for facilities in an area affected by major works in 2019, only 162 were accepted. And out of a total of $26.2 million, only $4.8 million was used, documents from an information access request show.
In 2021, the city, already aware of the issues surrounding the program and attempting to rectify the situation, hired Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton (RCGT) firm to investigate the reasons for the lack of success.
As a result, the city made some changes to the program, most notably by lowering the threshold above which merchants were eligible and pushing back the period for which an application could be made retrospectively to 2016.
However, the changes do not seem to have had the desired effect. Between February 2022 and July 2022, the city received 61 applications, of which only 18 were accepted, representing a 70% rejection rate.
“No financial damage”
“A large proportion of the companies that apply do not suffer any financial losses. This is the main reason for rejecting the applications, argued Luc Rabouin, in charge of economic and commercial development on the city’s executive committee. Otherwise, the question arises as to the deadlines that you have not yet completed the application.
In his opinion, Montreal would have been the first city to adopt a similar program that could be expanded in scope.
“We invested an estimated amount and said we would then see what happens in reality, but there was the pandemic and we didn’t have a normal year to adjust the program properly,” he explained.
The leader of the official opposition, Aref Salem, considers the program “non-functional”.
“With all the work that’s going on in the city, there’s definitely a problem,” he said. These are sums that slumber in the city’s coffers instead of being distributed to merchants who need them.