'It’s disappointing': Restaurants say Sask. budget missed the mark
'It’s disappointing': Restaurants say Sask. budget missed the mark
A group representing Canadian restaurants says the Saskatchewan budget missed an opportunity to help the food service industry.
Restaurants Canada was looking for some cost relief as restaurants grapple with skyrocketing food prices, inflation, a labour shortage and recovery from the pandemic.
“The 2023 budget didn't really move the fiscal needle for the restaurant sector. It’s disappointing,” Jennifer Henshaw, Restaurants Canada’s vice-president of the prairies and the north, tells CTV News.
Restaurants Canada says 75 per cent of table-service restaurants are still in debt because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the group is pleased the budget contained no new taxes, it was pushing for measures to help businesses’ bottom lines.
It recommended Saskatchewan follow the lead of other provinces by introducing mitigating measures to soften the impact of the minimum wage increases.
This month, Manitoba introduced the Small Business Minimum Wage Program. The program helps offset the impact of minimum wage increases by offering a one-time lump sum payment of $520 per employee — up to a maximum of $10,400.
Restaurants Canada called for Saskatchewan to reinstate a PST exemption on dining.
In 2017, the province announced restaurant meals would be subject to PST.
Tabled on Wednesday, the province outlined a $1 billion surplus in the budget — which will go towards paying off debt.
“With that $1 billion surplus, they could have gone much farther to provide some cost relief for the hardest hit industries,” Henshaw said.
The finance minister pushed back against spending the surplus because the funding may not be able to continue in the future.
“We have to be very careful as a government to not take one-time revenue and incorporate it and bake it into our year-over-year operational costs … If you’ve baked it into your operational costs, then the following year, where do you find that money,” Finance Minister Donna Harpauer told reporters, following the release of the budget.
Donald Trump said Thursday that he has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, igniting a federal prosecution that is arguably the most perilous of multiple legal threats against the former U.S. president as he seeks to reclaim the White House.
The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear the appeal of an Alberta woman who was unwilling to be vaccinated in order to get a life-saving organ transplant.
What happens to the brain when you take gravity away? According to a new study looking at astronauts both before and after space travel, that experience causes physical changes that researchers believe requires at least three years between longer missions to recover from.
As wildfires rage across Canada in what’s being called an unprecedented season, one expert says there’s more that individuals and communities can do to adapt and prevent forest fires from causing widespread devastation.
Rescuers in Washington state are praising the resourcefulness of a 10-year-old girl who survived on her own for more than 24 hours in the rugged terrain of the Cascade mountains after getting lost while out with her family.
Air pollution from wildfires remained well above healthy levels across much of southern and northern Ontario and several communities in British Columbia and Alberta on Thursday.
Regina's mayor says the city's fire department had growing concerns about the health, safety and well-being of those living in a homeless camp that was dismantled on Wednesday morning.
Two years after two statues were knocked down and damaged at the Manitoba Legislature, one is now back up and Indigenous leaders are upset by the decision.
Donald Trump said Thursday that he has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, igniting a federal prosecution that is arguably the most perilous of multiple legal threats against the former U.S. president as he seeks to reclaim the White House.
Video has surfaced showing a Mississauga, Ont. transit bus plowing into stopped traffic in a crash that left one person dead and at least eight injured on Thursday morning.
As interest rates continue to rise, the cost of buying a house in Ottawa and across Canada is becoming more expensive. Many homeowners are now forced to extend their mortgage payments.
Tumbler Ridge, a community with a population of 2,400 in northeastern B.C., has been ordered to evacuate Thursday due to the danger posed by an encroaching wildfire.
A day after the NDP government presented its 30-point plan to address the crisis at Surrey Memorial Hospital, the official Opposition is pledging to build a tower, while acknowledging their role in the situation.
Quebec's precarious wildfire situation is expected to remain stable over the next 48 hours but residents displaced by the raging forest fires likely won't be able to return home until early next week, Premier Francois Legault said Thursday.
An Ontario man charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in the death of Claudia Iacono, the daughter-in-law of the late Montreal Mafia associate Moreno Gallo, was arrested the day after the killing in Ontario on unrelated drug charges, public records show.
The mayor of Port Alberni says she does not expect the highway to reopen for several days at least, and she is asking the province to open more forestry roads to truck in much-needed supplies to communities west of the wildfire.
New Brunswick students under the age of 16 who identify as trans and non-binary won't be able to officially change their names or pronouns in school without parental consent.
The Halifax Regional Municipality says it will announce Thursday when more residents can return to their homes in communities impacted by the Tantallon wildfires.
A $100 million class action lawsuit launched on behalf of alleged victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy on Manitoulin Island has been abandoned after the victims reached individual settlements with the church.
Donald Trump said Thursday that he has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, igniting a federal prosecution that is arguably the most perilous of multiple legal threats against the former U.S. president as he seeks to reclaim the White House.
In the summer of 2022, London, Ont. barber and business owner Eddie Lopez suffered a brain aneurysm, heart attack, stroke, and seizure. He remains in hospital to this day.
