Many merchants still await payment, others don’t bother applying because process so complicated
Merchants who lost money during the three days of the Group of Seven Summit in June, 2018 are getting paid back by the federal government.
More than 120 business owners in Quebec City and La Malbaie applied for compensation for lost revenue.
They said the G7 protests and increased police presence deterred their customers, as many avoided Quebec City’s downtown altogether.
“People were definitely walking around town less,” said Benoît Huot, the owner the CD Mélomane record shop on St-Jean Street, who said he saw fewer customers as a result.
Global Affairs Canada will not say how much individual businesses are receiving.
One merchant in Quebec City’s Petit-Champlain neighbourhood says his store’s cheque amounted to thousands of dollars — however, it took an administrator 16 hours to do the necessary paperwork to get it.
Some deterred by application process
While more than two-thirds of the business owners who applied have received a cheque from the government, many merchants, like Huot, didn’t bother applying.
As a business in a designated area that stayed open during the G7, Huot was eligible for compensation — but only for revenue lost during the three days of the summit.
The government does not pay for emotional distress or other damage, like vandalism.
To be eligible for a compensation cheque, a merchant had to prove what their usual revenue is, based on monthly sales over a three-year period, provide an estimate of lost revenue for the three days of the summit, and mail in supporting documents.
For Huot, it simply wasn’t worth the effort.
“I looked at the form, and I found it to be a lot to fill out,” he said, calling it “a big job” for the money he’d get back.
Huot said small business owners are busy enough without having to carve out the time to fill out long compensation forms, and he said he’d already put in enough time before the summit, to protect the shop from vandalism and damage.
The head of the local merchants’ assocation, the Société de développement commercial (SDC) Montcalm, Jean-Pierre Bédard, said he know of just three business owners who made the effort to apply for federal compensation.
