Covid has caused a wrench of uncertainty to be thrown into everything, including contracts of all manners. We have had a number of commercial lease tenants who have approached us with respect to their leases. Those inquiries mostly stopped as the government rolled out its Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance (CECRA) program, which has since been replaced by the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy.
These programs have helped many small businesses weather the storm. However, for those tenants who have had their income dry up, there are other strategies that can be used to stickhandle commercial rents, ranging from negotiation, to insolvency and other options. One of the first steps is to have a lawyer review the lease and any personal guarantees (see our article on guarantees: https://www.flodenward.com/post/alberta-law-update-personal-guarantees ).
Your lawyer will then use that to build a plan to get to the best outcome given your circumstances. If you are in a commercial lease and would like legal advice with regards to it, please feel free to contact us.
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