Planet S Emergency: CEBA Loan & Business Crisis

The Planet is facing an existential crisis and desperately needs your help.

Like many Canadian businesses, the worker co-operative that operates Planet S (and Prairie Dog in Regina) took out a Canadian Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loan during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This loan was essential to Planet S’ survival. Without CEBA, we would have shut down two years ago.

The deadline for partial loan forgiveness is January 18. We’ve worked hard to prepare for this deadline, but unfortunately, Planet S — like many businesses and organizations — has still not recovered from Covid. Almost all of our revenue comes from local advertising and sales have NOT returned to pre-pandemic levels. The poor economy, high interest rates and cost-of-living crisis have harmed our customers and strangled our recovery.

Predatory competition (including censorship) by Facebook has also hurt us — badly.

Our options are limited. There are no grants to offset this scale of advertising collapse. Further loans from Planet S’ worker-owners are out — our co-op’s core staff have already accumulated massive personal debts just keeping Planet S going for 21 years. We just can’t cover losses anymore.

We must raise an absolute minimum $40,000 before Planet S' CEBA loan comes due Jan. 18. As we’re also carrying unsustainable accumulated debt from 2023 sales shortfalls, we’re setting our initial emergency fundraising target at $60,000.

(We've launched a similar fundraiser for our sister paper here .)

Planet S has been an important part of this community for more than two decades. In that time we've published independent and fact-based news and opinion presented artfully and with irreverence.

If Planet S made your life better, please help us. If you loved Best of Saskatoon, please help us. If Planet S helped you feel less alone in an increasingly conservative province, please donate generously.

We don’t know what the future holds for Saskatoon’s City Magazine, but we do know that without immediate and generous financial support from this community, the planet will die.

Please help a wounded newspaper out.