The Vice President of the Thompson-Okanagan Tourism Association thinks the province’s Small and Medium Sized Business Recovery Grant Program could be extended once again past August.

Ellen Walker-Matthews says that will depend on if there is money left in the $345-million grant program, which was extended just over two weeks ago.

“We know that without those international guests, there are many businesses that are going to suffer through the summer regardless of how much domestic traffic we’re able to get moving,” she said on the NL Morning News.

Walker-Matthews says TOTA has been optimistically planning for a return to normal this summer, while making changes as needed.

“We’re still sitting at almost 40 per cent behind this time last year, week over week, and so its been a struggle through the winter and its not going to be an easy summer, there’s no question,” she added.

“We’re hopeful that we’re moving in the right direction and we’re not where we were a year ago.”

B.C.’s Minister of Jobs and Economic Development, Ravi Kahlon, told NL News on March 12 that about $75 million of the $345-million fund had gone out the door to businesses.

“One of the biggest things in the beginning was to ensure that the dollars went to the businesses that were hardest hit. Those that saw up to a 70 per cent decline in revenue,” he said, on NL Newsday. “But now we have made that change [to allow for a 30 per cent decline in revenue], so more businesses have access to it.”

Kahlon says it is a little too early to see if there’s been a significant uptick since the changes were announced. He did note about 93 per cent of businesses that apply are qualifying for some of money that is available.

He also said that 50 businesses in the Kamloops-area have benefited from the grant program.

“Our purpose of the money was to get it to as many businesses as really needs it and the dollars are still there for any business that needs it,” Kalhon added. “We have seen significant uptake in applications and my hope is that businesses that need the dollars can and will apply and we’ll provide them.”

Most businesses are eligible for between $10,000 and $30,000 under the grant program, though tourism-related businesses can get another $5,000 to $15,000 on top of that.

“We have a program called the Tourism Resiliency Program that our stakeholders can sign up to. We meet with them one-on-one and try to find out what their particular issues are and set them up into the right course of action,” Walker-Matthews said.

“And through that we learn about different programs that aren’t working and try to feed that up to government, and they’ve been very responsive to making changes.”

– With files from Jeff Andreas