Important New Supports for Women Entrepreneurs

As you know, the Women’s Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (WEKH) has been working around the clock during the COVID-19 crisis to track impacts on diverse women entrepreneurs to share information about new supports and programs and to ensure a gender and diversity lens is brought to bear on responses to identify any gaps.

We have a couple of important items to share.

First, we are delighted that the Canadian Government has announced an expansion to the eligibility criteria for the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) to include many owner-operated small businesses. The changes to the CEBA will now be available to sole proprietors, those that rely on contractors and family-owned businesses that pay employees through dividends rather than payroll.

Expanding the criteria for the CEBA Loan Program is good news for many women entrepreneurs who were previously ineligible for support but no less impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additional support to strengthen the Women Entrepreneurship Ecosystem has been announced to ensure programs are not leaving anyone behind. 

Next week, WEKH in partnership with the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and the support of SheEO, will be introducing a Sharing Platform designed to help women entrepreneurs and the organizations that support them get the help they need through COVID-19 and beyond. Platform users will be able to ask for help they need or offer support to others, allowing members of the Canadian women entrepreneurship ecosystem to draw from the knowledge and reach of the community and share their own learnings to access business opportunities and collaboratively tackle challenges. 

Stay tuned for the launch in the coming days!