I am quite familiar with the changes, I have filed for every period since inception and know the calculations they use.
I'm critical of using revenue reduction *as a method*. It doesn't make sense to just give free money to companies whether or not COVID has impacted them.
Yeah how do you go about proving that revenue loss was COVID related? Lots of small businesses fail, lots of big businesses have bad years or bad quarters.
But the whole point of this program was to keep workers working because if they were laid off the government would be paying them on the CERB anyways for doing nothing, so better they be paid to work.
The whole thing is a sh!t-show, there's going to be abuse it's inevitable, and does the gov really have the resources to find it? Tax returns themselves sound like a ton of work on CRA's part this year. And how long would it take the Auditor General to audit half a trillion+ in program spending?
In the Trudeau gov's defense, they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Then again, a few of the most senior finance people in our gov resigned this year like Morneau and leaders at the Bank of Canada.