Canada Recovery Hiring Program (CRHP)

Beginning June 6^th, 2021, the government has introduced a new program to provide support to businesses in the reopening phase. Hiring additional staff during this reopening phase will be a challenging and costly process and the CRHP has been implemented to assist with this financial burden. The program will begin on June 6^th and will run alongside CEWS, using the same 4 week periods. Eligible employers will only be able to apply for one of CRHP or CEWS during any given period, selecting the option that will be most beneficial. The program will run for 6 periods ending on November 20, 2021.

Eligibility

In order to be eligible for the program, companies will need to experience a revenue drop of greater than 0% in the first qualifying period (June 6, 2021 – July 3, 2021) and a revenue drop of greater than 10% in all remaining periods. In the same manner as CEWS, current period months will be compared with either the corresponding month in 2019 (pre-covid) or against an alternative baseline of the average of January and February 2020.

How CRHP Is Calculated

CRHP is calculated by applying the subsidy rate to an incremental payroll paid. Incremental payroll paid is calculated as the difference between payroll paid in the CRHP period and the payroll paid in a baseline period. This baseline period is a 4 week period from March 14, 2021 to April 10, 2021. The rates applied to the incremental remuneration paid are as follows:

	Period 17	Period 18	Period 19	Period 20	Period 21	Period 22
Dates Covered	Jun 6 – Jul 3	Jul 4 – Jul 31	Aug 1 – Aug 28	Aug 29 – Sep 25	Sep 26 – Oct 23	Oct 24 – Nov 20
Hiring Subsidy Rate	50%	50%	50%	40%	30%	30%

Note that the incremental payroll paid is subject to a maximum of $1,129 per week for each employee.

Choosing Between CRHP & CEWS

CRHP will be more beneficial if payroll amounts have seen a large increase since the baseline period of March 14, 2021 – April 10, 2021. If these amounts have remained similar since, CEWS would be more beneficial. As CEWS ends after Period 20 (September 25, 2021), CRHP will be selected by default for Periods 21 and 22.

Sources

https://www.mnp.ca/en/insights/directory/canada-recovery-hiring-program
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2021/06/helping-hard-hit-businesses-hire-more-workers-with-the-canada-recovery-hiring-program.html
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/subsidy/emergency-wage-subsidy/cews-compare-crhp.html