Madam Chair, I'll give the hon. President of the Treasury Board some details.
As a result of being forced to shut down their operations, many businesses had to refer their employees to employment insurance before the emergency benefit was in place. To support their purchasing power, they entered into supplementary unemployment benefit agreements. Instead of receiving 55% of their wages, through the supplementary unemployment benefit, workers were therefore able to receive about 80% of their wages. However, despite the agreements reached with the businesses, the government didn't contact them and converted employment insurance into emergency benefits. It's radio silence about the supplementary unemployment benefit agreements. The government has forgotten about them.
If there is no response, businesses honour their part of the contract. Left in the dark, they continue to pay the extra benefits to their employees as agreed. Now workers have to pay back their emergency benefits because the supplementary unemployment benefits are over $1,000 and exclude them from the emergency response benefit. Because businesses often have more than 1,000 employees, that's a lot of people falling through the cracks.
What will the government do?