We have a letter to various levels of government outlining our demands and the needs of our industry in this crisis. You can see our full letter here.
If you are a business or independent contractor in our industry and would like to join our coalition by adding your name to our letter fill in this form.
We are uniting to demand relief for our industry, which we built to be the social, emotional, and physical backbone for so many Canadians. A united voice will be instrumental in weathering this crisis together.
It's our responsibility now to do whatever we can to make sure we are still here when this crisis passes. Join today, and leave a comment to tell us how your practice has been affected.
Comments are included below.
Income. I also workout regularly for my mental and physical well being and not having an outlet to release stress and anxiety especially going Into the winter months is very frustrating.
My industry is dying. This new shutdown, with no financial aide, will cripple the circus and pole industry across Canada, full stop; everywhere except Quebec, where the government has invested heavily in the arts sector.
Our studios need to be massive warehouses with very high ceilings; you can’t train to be an aerialist in a basement unit. These spaces are catastrophically expensive.
With no help we’re done. The whole sector. The entire industry in our city centres will fold. Thousands of people will be out of work, thousands of students and aspiring professional artists affected.
Commercial rent aide is needed now. Please help.
Kelly Taphouse
MOVE is a 5000sq foot boutique fitness studio exclusively for women. Due to Covid-19 we were forced to shut our doors down, immediately halting all revenue to a dead stop threatening the likelihood of our community and young business surviving. We’ve had to lay off our entire staff and grieve the separation from the hundreds of women we serve daily/weekly/yearly.
Like most small health and Wellness businesses, MOVE is family run and 100% financially self backed business. If we lose MOVE we will loose it all. If the Government doesn’t step up and give us the support and relief we need , all of the incredible work we do for women in the fitness space could fall apart. In fact, all of the good our industry does for the people of our country will fall apart. I’ve spent my entire career serving in the fitness industry and I’m not about to lose it all because this lack of support. Not for my young children, employees and community that we cherish so much.
Lyzabeth Lopez
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, we have shut the doors to our gym and frozen all members membership dues. Because of this, we have zero opportunity for income from the gym that we have leased.
Our monthly rent & government TMI (government taxes, maintenance & insurance) payments are in the tens of thousand per month. To date there is no government assistance for fitness centres or the contractors that work out of our facilities. There is no forgiveness from landlords and the insurance companies have a ’no micro-organism clause’ meaning they will not assist in any work stoppage for COVID-19.
Gym owners and being hit twice, we are making no income, but we are also expected to pay out lease payments and TMI as if we were still allowed to have our doors open.
No gym small or large will be able to withstand the mounting dept that will be created for the owners in our industry. To date that only government assistance is for us to get loans to pay the landlords and government for our closed studios. Just a few months closed could cost us anywhere from 60-100K plus (on top of making no income).
We collectively request a rent & TMI freeze for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. I am aware that the City of Brampton is already doing this, or something similar. It’s tough enough dealing with making no income (with a brand new baby) and not being able to assist the amazing trainers that work out of our facility, please don’t additionally send us into soaring dept with the only recourse being taking huge loans to pay back potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Please allow us and our contractors to come back to jobs to keep the economy healthy versus having us all shut down and taking away all the jobs that provide, as well as the important services of health that we provide to our community.
Shannon Crane
Brass Vixens Owner and FounderBeing an entrepreneur is hard. I know that and after running Brass Vixens for almost 15 years, I have been through a lot of good times and a lot of bad times. This pandemic unprecedented to say the least. I voluntarily shut down my studios before the order came from the government, I know it was the right thing to do, it is better to over react than under react. I realize this is the first pandemic for all of us (hopefully the last!!!) and though I do appreciate the government is doing what it thinks is best, there is a huge disconnect happening right now for small businesses. Our businesses MUST be shut down, I accept that. I can go without, I can pivot my business, I can go into debt personally to keep my business going, I am happy the government has a loan program in place to help small businesses like mine. What seems brutally unfair is why my business is shut down and I am at a standstill but my landlord’s businesses take no hit. Why does my government think it is ok to stop revenue from so many small businesses, give us what seems like help but our biggest stress and worry is to our landlords. Why is their business not interrupted just like the rest of us? Why is there no rent freeze? I will never recoup the money I am losing being closed. We are all making sacrifices, aren’t we? With this current program it seems like some of us are sacrificing a lot more than others. We need a rent freeze.
Caleigh Rykiss
BOLO INC FounderThis COVID-19 crisis is hard on everyone, but none more so than small businesses in the fitness, retail and hospitality spaces. We (BOLO) are a large class-based gym and social club downtown Toronto with a 7000 sq ft footprint, that also includes a full café, a salon, sauna beds, and cryotherapy. We service almost 10,000 members and have created a health and wellness hub that many members have described as their home-away-from-home. As things stand, we are unlikely to survive this crisis. We have a massive amount of rent, taxes, maintenance, insurance, software, and utility bills, for which we have no relief. As a small business owned by a young, local couple with no big financial backers or support – we have zero capacity to take on the debt that is accumulating during this government mandated shutdown. Deferral may seem like a generous offer but believe us when we say that our young business will not withstand carrying forward any interest, loans or payments in addition to the overhead we already shoulder. We can only hope that the leaders of our city, province & country will step in to ensure that our business (and businesses like ours) will still exist when this is over so that we can continue to support our community, and continue to employ our 35 young staff members, and contribute to the overall economy.