Finance Committee on April 3rd, 2020

[Sherri Torjman]

Yes, and I think there just needs to be some way of enabling Canadians to ask questions and to help people figure out—a navigator, actually, to help Canadians navigate the system because it's happening so fast and changes are being made, obviously necessarily. There is some excellent assistance being put in place, but there needs to be something just to help navigate the confusion. I think that would be very helpful.

To follow up on Mr. Poilievre's question about helping small business, I mention those people who run small businesses but they are not incorporated. There is a large number of small businesses that are not incorporated. My understanding is that they will not be eligible for the $40,000 loans provided through banks. That needs some clarification and if that could be lifted in any way, that would be one way. I know some people don't want to pile on debt, and that is a problem of course, but those funds would be helpful to many people to ride through the immediate crisis. Again, if the eligibility criteria leaves them out, that would be something to look at, as it would really help.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Francesco, a quick question.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I do wish to go to Dr. Mintz.

I, again, thank you for your feedback.

Do you have any comments on the Canada emergency business account? The banks have that up on their websites and small businesses can submit for a 25% forgivable loan, interest-free for over two years. I think that's the mechanism that's been put in place.

Do you have any comments with regard to that, Jack?

[Sherri Torjman]

Mr. Sorbara, are they eligible? Would a small business that has hired a number of people and is not incorporated be eligible? I'm not sure.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I think they should be incorporated either at the provincial level or the federal level.

[Sherri Torjman]

Yes, a lot of small business employers are not.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

If Dr. Mintz could get in there for a second, that would be great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We'll make note of that, Sherri.

[Sherri Torjman]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Jack, do you want in?

[Dr. Jack Mintz]

I am going to check. I think unincorporated businesses potentially could be included because they would have a business number, typically, for GST purposes—

[Sherri Torjman]

Right. I think if you read the fine print in some of the material that has come....

Sorry, the fine print of some of the materials that have come out have excluded them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Go ahead, Mr. Mintz.

[Dr. Jack Mintz]

The one concern, though, is that—and one would like to hear from Finance about why they were excluded—in unincorporated businesses, there are a lot of people who also have other sources of income, so it becomes another support program for a particular individual who might be getting other support through mechanisms that are providing them money, the CERB—so those things. Maybe that's part of trying to get this all out at one time; maybe there are some things they wanted to avoid there.

In principle, I can see the point of including the unincorporated businesses, but one of the things is the impact on some of the other support measures.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay.

Thank you, all.

I can't see the four witnesses as I usually can, but if you do want to step in and you have an answer or you want to add to a point, you will have to interrupt and we'll try to get you in.

I will turn to Mr. Ste-Marie and then Mr. Julian.

Mr. Ste-Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you Mr. Chair.

I'd like to begin by greeting all of you and thanking the witnesses for being here.

My questions will be addressed to Mr. Fortin, from the Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes du Québec, but I'll make a brief comment first.

I welcome the creation of the Canada emergency response benefit. It is a very important initiative, and it changes things, except that Mr. Fortin's testimony speaks for itself: the criteria currently in place exclude many people, including many self-employed workers. Yesterday, we talked about volunteer firefighters. I applaud the fact that the government said it would take care of them. Let us hope that this is the case for all the people who find themselves in an unfortunate situation.

I'm thinking, for example, of the plumber who goes out of business but has to respond to an emergency. I am thinking of health care professionals who have closed their offices, but the code of ethics also forces them to accept emergencies. I think of someone I know who does translation and who doesn't dare say no to his main employer, even if it's a small contract, when most of his income is no longer there.

Mr. Fortin, your testimony shows that the musicians fall through the cracks. I think that the government should really not let such situations happen. You said that a person was receiving $53 every two weeks because the school continued to pay them, but that they had no other income. You talked about another person who was forced to sublet his apartment to meet his basic needs. That's really terrible.

Do you have numbers? Are you able to tell us how much money musicians are currently losing? What are the estimates?

[Luc Fortin]

Thank you for your question.

In an internal survey, we asked our members to send us all information about lost contracts. Of course, this is not an exhaustive survey in which all our members would have participated, but the numbers are still very impressive. We're looking at close to $1.5 million in lost contracts. That's hundreds of commitments for hundreds of musicians. The losses run from mid-March to the end of June in terms of cancellations. That is still a lot of money. It is money that would have been declared for tax purposes and would have allowed these people to make a living, to pay their rent and so on.

It's a situation many artists find themselves in. It's not just musicians. Many of them have continued to earn small incomes, especially in teaching. Sometimes it's compensation for lost contracts. They are now experiencing great anxiety because they will not be able to receive the $2,000. They will have to live on very small incomes. It is a disaster. I think that the Canada emergency response benefit is excellent, but for someone who earns very little, at least there should be compensation for the shortfall. We would need that.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Fortin, if musicians no longer have contracts, it is not because they have difficulty playing their instrument well and suddenly become less talented. Rather, it is because of a major health crisis that shows are cancelled and public gatherings are banned. Musicians are victims of this situation. Their low incomes deprive them of the $2,000 Canada emergency response benefit. We hope that this will change.

I'll take an extreme case, since you were talking about artists. An artist who receives royalties for his or her songs and receives $2,000 or $3,000 payments from Spotify or others would not qualify for the $2,000 benefit. I sincerely hope that will change.

In closing, Mr. Fortin, can you give us other examples of what your members are going through, to give us an idea of the magnitude of the crisis?

[Luc Fortin]

I've given you three fairly typical examples. The situation is widespread. It's always the same thing. We're inundated with e-mails about it. It's always the same problem: people have earned a small income working in a convenience store or a pharmacy, for example, and they would have to stop working to get the $2,000. That is not productive. People should be able to continue to work and earn a small income and still qualify.

How can we fix the problem? Surely the Department of Finance has some solutions. You could solve it through the next tax return. You could provide the difference between $2,000 and the income earned. You could also establish a maximum amount that people are entitled to earn without being deprived of this assistance.

There are a number of solutions, and we can't let these people fall between two stools and be left with absolutely nothing, when they are entitled to this assistance just like every other Canadian who is in the same situation.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Yes, indeed. Thank you very much for your testimony.

There are several solutions. This morning, I was talking about them with my colleague, the member for Lac-Saint-Jean. Why should the criteria not be the same as those for employment insurance? The benefit would be reduced based on earned income. That would solve everything.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You're over your time, Gabriel.

Mr. Julian, the floor is yours. Then after that we will come to Mr. Cumming.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. I hope that you and your families are safe and healthy, as we wish for all Canadians.

We are working together at the finance committee, like all parliamentarians are working together generally. To the credit of the government, it has adopted many of the proposals from Jagmeet Singh in the NDP, for example the wage subsidy of 75% and the suspension of student loans.

There are many things that I think we would all agree we still have to do. Particularly concerning is the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' report that came out late yesterday, which indicates that with the emergency benefits, over 860,000 unemployed workers, about one-third of the unemployed, will not have access to the response benefit. This is a matter of real concern.

Ms. Torjman, in your excellent testimony you indicated how confusing it was and that it wasn't very clear who is eligible and who is not. Currently we're putting together a contingent of public servants who will have to, as their role, reject people from the emergency benefit. You also indicated a plan B, and that we needed to look to immediate payment if plan A, the emergency benefit, didn't work.

Would it not be simpler and much more effective if we just made the benefit universal, sent it out across the country and taxed it back for those Canadians who don't need that benefit?

[Sherri Torjman]

Thank you for your question, Mr. Julian.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about that. What should we have done? What could we have done better? Would there have been a different approach?

I do understand the approach, in that it was set up to match the employment insurance system. These benefits are intended for workers. We do have a huge piece, as I said to you, missing in the middle of our income security system right now. We've dealt with the needs of families with children. We have a relatively good pension system in place. We've always identified this piece in the middle as problematic, and now we're trying to put in place an emergency benefit that is trying to address some of these gaps we've faced for a long time.

My sense is that we should continue at the moment with the plan that is under way and try to work out some of the problems that are coming to our attention. I just mentioned the other programs as plan B, so that we know we have them in place. If necessary—ideally we won't have to use them right away—we can ramp them up. Through both benefits—the child benefit for families with children and the GST credit for all Canadians—we have an apparatus in place to address those needs.

My sense is to go with what we—

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I'm sorry. I have another question and I only have six minutes. Thank you for that.

Obviously for the people who we're hearing from in my constituency and others across the country, they see themselves as being excluded from the emergency benefit, which is why I asked the question.

You also raised the issue of reconstruction and this is fundamental. We have a society coming into the crisis where half of Canadian families were $200 away from insolvency on any given month. In the same way that after the Second World War we built a network of social programs, a social safety net, do you not think that reconstruction needs to be a new economy that's based on fairness?

Right now we're asking the lowest-income Canadians to take the risk. They're the cleaners. They're the front-line workers. They're being asked to pull us through this crisis, and that's the principle behind the courage bonus. Don't we need, coming out of this crisis, to build on reconstruction and, as you mentioned, really build an economy based on fairness for all Canadians?