Finance committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Ste-Marie. These are technical issues, of course. When we talk about the divisor, it's as though we were speaking Martian. The divisor is what will calculate the benefit rate, that is, the money a person will get, the unemployment benefit. In othe

Finance committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, good morning and thank you for inviting me. The public health crisis we have been in since the spring of 2020 is coupled with an economic crisis, the likes of which we have not known in our lifetimes. Last year alone, between mid-March an

Finance committee  The economy would have completely collapsed. A lot of people would have gone broke. A lot of people would not have been able to cover their basic necessities, paying their rent, mortgage and so on. The help provided by the government was enormous. I did some quick math. Since Se

Finance committee  It depends on what you mean by guaranteed basic income. There are many schools of thought. Is a guaranteed basic income an alternative to all of the support and income replacement measures? By those measures, I mean every form of income replacement, from occupational illness co

Finance committee  You brought up two aspects. The CRB is basically for those who are not eligible for EI, in other words, self-employed workers, who make up 15% of the workforce—three million people in Canada. Those who have been out of work since the beginning of the pandemic are counting on tha

Finance committee  Ladies and gentlemen members of Parliament, thank you very much for your invitation. You have received my notes, but I had to make some adjustments to my testimony as a result of Monday's budget. We all know that since March 2020 the pandemic has shaken the labour world and the

Finance committee  I understand.

Finance committee  Beginning in September 2020, the government introduced programs to replace the Canada emergency response benefit, known as CERB, including the Canada recovery benefit, or CRB. Administered by the Canada Revenue Agency, the CRB provides income support to those who are not eligible

Human Resources committee  Yes, that can be a possible solution. The important thing is for the program to protect workers and to cover its costs. Since the government of the day withdrew the state from the fund in 1990, it has only had premiums from the workers and the employers, on a 40-60 basis. Employ

Human Resources committee  They are mistaken. Take, for example, the Québec Parental Insurance Plan, the QPIP. It is probably the only social program that had the courage to do that after the 1990s. Since 2006, self-employed workers have been automatically protected under the program. They pay a premium,

Human Resources committee  That is a huge topic. In the appendices at the end of the document we have provided for you, in French and in English, you will see a study we prepared on how self-employed workers are covered around the world. We went to see what was being done in Australia, and even in places

Human Resources committee  Is your question for me, Mr. Dong?

Human Resources committee  The entire world of work has been paralyzed by the public health situation. The shock was brutal last year and continues to be so. There are still major shockwaves. You can see what is happening in Ontario at the moment. The economy is paralyzed in a number of places. So these in

Human Resources committee  Yes, of course, and the cost has been massive since the beginning of the crisis.

Human Resources committee  Since March 15, 2020, $200 billion has been spent on income replacement benefits. That's the equivalent of more than 10 years of the employment insurance budget. However, millions of people have received assistance. Let's remember for the rest of our lives that, in 2020 alone, 9