As British Columbia reopens and you bring staff back, you now have a genuine choice to make every claim period — and making it well is worth real money. The Canada Recovery Hiring Program (CRHP), launched on June 6, 2021, runs in parallel with the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), and the rule is straightforward: for each overlapping period, an eligible employer claims the higher of the two, not both. The two programs reward opposite behaviours — CEWS subsidizes your existing payroll against a revenue decline, while CRHP subsidizes the increase in your payroll as you rehire and raise hours. Which one pays more depends entirely on whether you are holding steady or actively growing your wage bill. This is a model-it-each-period decision, and here is how to make it.
How is CRHP different from CEWS?
The mental model that matters: CEWS looks backward at what you have; CRHP looks forward at what you are adding.
- CEWS pays a percentage of your eligible payroll, scaled to how far your revenue has fallen. The deeper your decline, the more you get — but it does not reward you for hiring.
- CRHP pays a percentage of your incremental remuneration — the increase in total eligible pay between a fixed baseline period (March 14 to April 10, 2021) and the current period. It explicitly rewards adding people, hours, or wages as you reopen.
The CRHP subsidy rate is 50% for the early periods (claim periods 17 through 19), then steps down to 40%, 30%, and finally 20% in the later periods through to November 20, 2021. To claim CRHP you must show a revenue decline of more than 0% for the first qualifying period (June 6 – July 3, 2021) and more than 10% for the periods after July 4.
When does CRHP beat CEWS — and when does it not?
The decision turns on one question: are you growing your payroll above its March-to-April 2021 baseline?
- If your payroll is rising as you rehire and restore hours, CRHP's reward for that increase can easily exceed what CEWS pays on your declining revenue — especially as CEWS rates taper down through the summer.
- If your payroll is flat or shrinking relative to the baseline, you have little or no incremental remuneration, so CRHP produces little, and CEWS (or neither) is your answer.
This is precisely why the "claim the higher of the two" rule exists, and why you should compute both every period rather than defaulting to the one you used last time. The right answer can flip from period to period as your payroll recovers and the CEWS rate declines.
A worked example: a BC firm rehiring through the summer
Take a Burnaby events-and-catering company emerging from restrictions. Its baseline payroll (March 14 – April 10, 2021) was depressed at $80,000 for the four-week period, because much of its team was still laid off. As bookings return, it rehires aggressively. In a later summer claim period, eligible payroll rises to $140,000, and its revenue is still down about 25% versus the comparable pre-pandemic month.
Path A — claim CEWS. With a 25% revenue decline and CEWS rates having tapered into the lower end of their range by mid-summer, the firm's CEWS recovery on its $140,000 payroll might work out to roughly $22,000 for the period (illustrative, based on the sliding-scale base rate at that decline).
Path B — claim CRHP. Incremental remuneration is $140,000 − $80,000 = $60,000. At a CRHP rate of, say, 40% for that period, the subsidy is $60,000 × 40% = $24,000.
In this period, CRHP wins by about $2,000 — and crucially, the gap widens in later periods as the firm's payroll climbs further above baseline while CEWS rates keep falling. By the final periods, with CRHP still paying on a large incremental payroll, the hiring program can pull meaningfully ahead. Had the owner simply kept claiming CEWS out of habit, that growing advantage would have been forfeited, period after period.
Now reverse it: if this same firm had not rehired and its payroll sat near the $80,000 baseline, incremental remuneration would be roughly zero, CRHP would pay almost nothing, and CEWS would clearly be the correct claim. Same business, opposite answer — driven entirely by the hiring decision.
What does this mean for how you plan rehiring?
The strategic insight for BC owners is that CRHP changes the economics of rehiring at exactly the moment you are deciding how fast to bring people back. Because the program subsidizes the increase above your March–April baseline, a portion of the cost of restoring your team is offset — effectively lowering the marginal cost of each rehire during the reopening window.
That does not mean hire ahead of real demand — overstaffing a recovery is a classic way to burn cash. But where you have genuine, returning revenue that justifies rebuilding your team, CRHP tilts the calculation in favour of doing it now, within the program window, rather than waiting. Align your rehiring plan with your bookings and pipeline, then let CRHP reduce the cost of the staffing-up you were going to do anyway.
A simple period-by-period routine
For each remaining claim period through November 20, 2021:
- Confirm your revenue-decline eligibility — more than 0% for the June 6 – July 3 period, more than 10% thereafter.
- Compute your CEWS on current eligible payroll at the applicable, tapering rate.
- Compute your CRHP — current eligible payroll minus the $80,000-style baseline (your own March 14 – April 10 figure), times the period's CRHP rate (50% / 40% / 30% / 20%).
- Claim the higher of the two. Do not assume; the winner can change as payroll recovers and CEWS rates fall.
- Document the baseline once, carefully. Your baseline period is fixed, so getting that figure right underpins every CRHP claim you make.
Key takeaways
- CRHP (from June 6, 2021) and CEWS run in parallel; you claim the higher of the two each period, never both.
- CEWS rewards declining revenue on existing payroll; CRHP rewards the increase in payroll above the March 14 – April 10, 2021 baseline.
- CRHP pays 50% of incremental remuneration early, tapering to 40%, 30%, then 20% — and tends to win when you are actively rehiring while CEWS rates fall.
- Eligibility needs a revenue decline of >0% for the first period and >10% thereafter.
- Model both programs every period and fix your baseline figure carefully — the optimal choice can flip as your team rebuilds.
The reopening is not just an operational event; it is a financing decision in disguise. The owners who come out of it strongest are the ones who treat each claim period as a fresh calculation and let the government share the cost of the recovery they were going to build regardless. Rebuild deliberately, claim the larger number, and never let habit cost you the better subsidy.
If you would like help fixing your CRHP baseline and modelling CRHP against CEWS for every remaining period this year, RN Canada's advisory team can run the numbers and make sure you always claim the larger subsidy. Reach out about fractional CFO and advisory support and let us turn the reopening into a well-financed recovery.