Edmonton businesses affected by major municipal construction projects could be compensated for financial losses if city council approves a draft mitigation policy.

Executive committee members voted unanimously on Wednesday to recommend that council approve a draft policy on compensating businesses hard-hit by construction. 

Under the draft policy, the city would create a grant program to help businesses that demonstrate financial losses due to multi-year construction projects.

Front-facing businesses would have to show a gross profit loss of more than 10 per cent to qualify for the subsidy, which would be capped at $20,000 per establishment per year.

“I’m just looking to see if we can have one more piece to the puzzle to help our business community when they’re dealing with significant construction in and around their area,” Coun. Andrew Knack said in the committee meeting.

Knack said Edmonton can learn from the city of Montreal, which set aside more than $25 million for financial assistance but did not end up spending it all.

“It turned out it was not this massive impact financially to the city, but it allowed them to help deal with some very local issues on some very specific construction projects,” he said.

Andrew Sennyah, a senior policy analyst at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, told the committee 40 per cent of small Alberta businesses surveyed before the municipal election said they would like to see a construction mitigation plan implemented. 

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