The fact remains, Mr. Chair, that there are so many Canadians who are going to be facing incredibly difficult choices. The government has had this flagged for weeks now, and yet they have so far refused to change those programs. Someone who earns $1 more than $1,000 a month will lose the entire $2,000 emergency response benefit. That is certainly not generous. Conservatives believe these programs should be more flexible.
There are other examples of the government hurting Canada's response to this pandemic. The delay in approvals by Health Canada is forcing provinces and companies to look elsewhere for personal protective equipment. We know that the mass production of personal protective equipment is critical not only to the front-line health care workers, like nurses, doctors and support workers, but also to supporting the efforts to get people back to work safely.
Canada's small businesses have answered the call and are trying to meet this demand, but news reports indicate that they are running into government bureaucracy and red tape, since Health Canada has so far been unable to come up with a system that fast-tracks approvals. Why is the government slowing down the production of Canadian-made PPE?