Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here, and please thank your departments for stepping up. It's amazing to see the response from so many people in so many departments helping out Canadians. It truly was inspirational.
What I was even more proud to hear was how, when you talked about supporting our arts, you used the words consistent, rapid and simple, helping existing programs already with pipelines and helping people who weren't helped.
Monsieur Piché talked about the performing artists and how much they suffered immediately. I'll speak from experience, because until about a year ago, almost to the day, I had been a performing artist my entire life. Artists are used to being on the downturn—they're the first to be let go and the last to come back from downturns—but this happened all of a sudden and all at once. These are people who usually are self-reliant. There are a lot of self-employed and small businesses that just hustle in that gig economy itself.
These very artists are the ones we turn to. Everyone turned to these artists to get us through when we were in isolation. I know that besides my office being hit with many, many requests for support, my personal cellphone just exploded. I had a husband and wife who worked for the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony together and now all of a sudden entire seasons have been blown out, with musicians who have no place to perform.
Can you explain to me in simple terms how much the CERB helped artists, especially in that kind of an area where it wouldn't normally apply? Also, with regard to the wage subsidy, I've talked to a number of the smallest of theatres and brick and mortar places who said that maybe the stage was dark, but they were able to keep their staff online and look toward the future.
Can you explain how that helped the arts in general, before we even get into other programs?