Employers can defer payments of corporate income taxes until the end of August, a significant step that is expected to give companies access to about $1.5 billion of funds.

The province has also worked with ATB Financial, a provincial Crown corporation, so personal banking customers and small businesses can seek deferrals on loans, mortgages and credit lines for up to six months.

The coronavirus has triggered a collapse in oil prices and will likely spark the onset of a global recession, Kenney warned.

In turn, share prices of some Alberta-based energy companies have dropped by as much as 90 per cent and “we have an industry, to be blunt, that is basically on life support,” he later told reporters.