Thank you very much for those questions. I'm happy to answer them.
First of all, on the universal benefit, I think many people will have seen that the United States, for example, is talking about sending a cheque for $1,200 to every American. We came to the conclusion quite rapidly that sending a modest amount like that to every Canadian is not nearly as advantageous as sending more to those who are actually impacted by COVID-19.
In the case of the $500 per week for 16 weeks, people will be able to get $8,000. That, in our estimation, is the right way to deal with this challenge—to address the people who are actually finding themselves in a significantly challenged position as a result of this crisis, and then, on top of that, to make sure that the firms that can continue to have a relationship with their employees can have an ability, through the wage subsidy, to pay them [Technical difficulty—Editor]. We think that's just the right way to do this.
We might also add that administration is critically important in this regard, and the timing to get out the cheques we're talking about is coming very soon. That is how we plan on dealing with this challenge.
With respect to working with the banks, we've been working every single day with the banks to make sure they have the ability to provide credit to businesses through this time. That has been an intense series of discussions, but it's gone well. We now have the banks getting close to being up and running to provide small businesses with that $40,000 interest-free loan. We're hopeful that this can start as early as next week.
We know that mortgage deferrals are something we've provided capacity for the banks to do, and I understand that this is getting going as well, with tens of thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands, of those applications going on.