Madam Speaker, I was just moving on to seniors, who are looking forward to us listening to science and listening to public health. I will move on to the debate at hand.
I had already given some of my remarks before the break, but as a first step, our government is providing $742.4 million for one-time payments. These payments would help alleviate the financial hardship faced by GIS and allowance recipients who received pandemic relief benefits in 2020, but who also faced a reduction or loss of their GIS or allowance benefits in July, 2021.
As the payments would be automatic, seniors would not need to take any action to receive the one-time payments. These payments would also fully compensate affected seniors. They would be non-taxable, too. We estimate that the 183,000 GIS clients who qualified to receive CERB or similar benefits in 2020 would benefit.
We did not want to just provide a quick fix. We also wanted to ensure that seniors would not be facing such a loss—