CEBA extension ‘a sigh of relief’ for Regina’s German Club

Regina’s German Club hopes it has a large weight off its shoulders after the federal government extended the deadline for the repayment of Canadian Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loans.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced changes to the repayment schedule for all CEBA loans, extending the deadline for one year to Jan. 1 2025 instead of Jan. 1, 2024.

Within a couple of hours of the announcement being made, the finer details began to be revealed, showing small businesses still face penalties and interest charges if they take the extension. Those details weren’t known at the time of an interview with German Club president Kerri Van Loosen.

Van Loosen was relieved after hearing the announcement.

“Naturally, it would be fun if the debt would just disappear but we understand that that’s not a possibility,” she said with a laugh. “Just knowing that we have a little bit of a grace period, and that it’s going to broken into two portions and a lower interest rate, is a giant sigh of relief.”

The year-long extension should help the club pay back the $60,000 CEBA loan, something the club was struggling to pay.

The way the loan was set up, the club would have had to pay back $40,000 all at once by Jan. 1 of next year and the other $20,000 would have been forgiven. If it did not make the deadline, it would have had to pay the full $60,000.

Van Loosen said the new deadline will give the club time to think of an effective game plan.

“I’m still trying to absorb it all, and sending this information to my board of directors and seeing how we want to change our game plan, or how we are going to be proceeding now,” said Van Loosen.

Van Loosen made her comments before it was known about the penalties and interest charges.

The club did set up a GoFundMe page to help raise enough money to pay off the loan. On Thursday, donations sat at $11,573.

Van Loosen said the club will use that money to try to get more debt off its plate. A previous plan was that if the club did not meet its fundraising goal of $60,000, it would sold its parking lot across the street from the club.

“Whatever money we bring in, with that we can slam it down on the debt right away,” she said. “The idea was that if we could raise enough, we wouldn’t have to sell our parking lot which would hopefully secure us the full $40,000 that was offered to pay back.”

Van Loosen said selling the lot still has not been pushed to the side yet.

“Any funds that we could bring in right now would definitely be helpful,” she said. “We don’t want to sell our lot. Obviously that would hurt us for our regular daytime business and such.

“But again, we really have to sit down as the board of directors (and see) what our best plan of action moving forward is, how we want to allocate our funds that we have already received on our GoFundMe, and with any possible negotiation we have regarding our parking lot.”

The extension will provide more time for planning, and more time for private bookings,

“It will definitely make things easier for us,” said Van Loosen. “It doesn’t feel as big of a burden to come up with such a lump sum all at once. It still is a big number to swallow regardless.”

Oktoberfest at the German Club is coming up on Sept 29. The club is also available for private bookings.