Finance Committee on April 3rd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you for appearing, folks, in this complicated set-up with people by phone all across the country.

With that, I'll officially call the meeting to order.

For the formalities, welcome to meeting number 16 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. We are operating under the order of reference of Tuesday, March 24 for the committee to meet to discuss the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before we start, I want to inform all members again that pursuant to this order of reference, the committee is meeting for two reasons: one, to receive evidence concerning matters related to the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic; and two, to consider a bi-weekly report to be provided by the Minister of Finance or his delegate on all actions undertaken pursuant to parts 3, 8 and 18 of the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act.

Today's meeting is taking place exclusively by teleconference, and the audio feed of all our proceedings is made available by the House of Commons website.

I'll just go over the rules a little bit again. Before speaking, un-mute your phone, state your name so we know who is speaking and please identify the witness to whom you are addressing the question. If there are any problems along the way, or if you need to interrupt, just un-mute your phone—and I think I know most people's voices by now—and I will recognize you.

With that we will start.

Mr. Mintz, you're an experienced hand at these kinds of meetings. We'll start with you. If you would open up with your remarks in the range of five minutes, that would be great. The floor is yours.

[Dr. Jack Mintz, President's Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I am actually going to be very brief. I did not prepare a discussion. I decided that I just want to make two or three points, but I would rather leave it to the question period for people to ask me any questions at all.

I also want to be up front. As some of you know, I'm chairing the Alberta premier's Economic Recovery Council, but I want to make very clear that any opinions I give here are strictly my own and do not represent the views of the council.

I first want to say that I support the wage package that came out, certainly in principle and a significant part of its design. There are some issues that I'd be happy to explore further if you wish, about whether there are ways and some alternatives that could be looked at to try to make sure payments are made more speedily.

Also, I think there are some issues to be dealt with vis-à-vis the 30% rule in terms of the reduction in revenues. I think it's appropriate to have something like that, but unfortunately, based on past experience, I would say that these things are always complicated and can lead to some unfairness because income doesn't flow in the same amounts. There can be peaks and troughs and all that sort of thing, but there may be some ways to try to ameliorate that.

Then finally I think some careful thought has to be given to how to deal with charities and non-profits.

There are other things that are part of the package, and one can go into various details. We're all in a rush. We're all dealing with a huge problem on our hands in this country with, as I have called it, “a medically induced economic coma” as well as a health crisis. There are very difficult trade-offs to be made, and the government is responding as fast as it can, but when you're doing things fast, obviously nothing is ever perfect. Later on there will probably be some lessons learned about how not to do things, and one can always assess that.

Then there is going to be what is probably the more important issue, which is when we can start getting back to work and what is going to be required for that. I think there are going to be a number of issues to be dealt with.

Anyway, I'll stop there and turn it back to you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, Mr. Mintz.

We will turn, then, to the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, with Ms. Torjman.

[Sherri Torjman, Former Vice-President, Caledon Institute of Social Policy]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I'd like to thank the committee for the invitation to participate in this discussion. I want to thank all the members of Parliament for their incredibly hard work and leadership during this crisis. I'd like to thank the public servants, who are working so tirelessly to put in place these emergency measures: a complex and monumental task in these unprecedented times.

I want to make a few remarks, and then of course welcome questions. My remarks are made within the context of some guiding principles. First is immediacy of response; remediation of administrative errors can come later. Second are straightforward and simplified eligibility criteria and reduction or removal, where possible, of administrative requirements. I can provide some details on that. Finally, just a note I want to put in here, provinces and territories, in the spirit of Team Canada, should not offset any new federal payments by reducing income-related benefits, such as housing subsidies or child care subsidies. Unfortunately, this has happened in the past, and we hope that it won't happen under these circumstances.

I want to make just a few comments about the various components of the emergency measures, and again, I would welcome questions about the details.

In terms of the first benefit announced, the CERB, its scope and eligibility criteria to some extent remain unclear. I know it's extraordinarily difficult to put in place such a complex program so quickly, but even the general description of the CERB on the website—the first two sentences that describe it—is very confusing. For example, the second sentence says, “If you are looking for a job but haven’t stopped working because of COVID-19, you are not eligible”. Many self-employed people are looking at this, and we are receiving phone calls regularly from people. Just the other day, there was an email saying, “I wonder if this is me.” It's not very clear, because most people are in theory in the labour market. They want to be in the labour market, but there are no jobs to be had.

There are also questions with respect to certain aspects of the eligibility criteria that pertain to groups of people. For example, I've had questions from families with children with special needs. They are taking care of children with severe disabilities, for example, or young adults with severe disabilities. Would they qualify for this assistance? They're really struggling right now as programs close and all their sources of support dry up. Would they be eligible? For example, would someone holding a Canadian work visa who just recently came to the country and hasn't accumulated the necessary $5,000 be eligible for this? Would workers over 65 who have modest contractual income be eligible? There is an eligibility floor but not a ceiling, and perhaps that was intended.

My proposal in this regard is to perhaps dedicate a call line on CRA, if possible, or a call centre, to be able to answer some of these specific questions, or even a component on the CRA website where people can write in their questions. A briefing would be really helpful. Just like we're having regular health briefings, a “financial assistance health briefing” on our regular news broadcast would be really helpful. I'm chairing a committee reporting to the Minister of National Revenue, and because of the complexity of a particular tax measure we've recommended a dedicated call line around the disability tax credit. It certainly would be helpful for Canadians around the CERB.

I was pleased to see that the Prime Minister announced today that payments would be advanced on the Canada child benefit and the GST credit. That's really very crucial. We need to make sure that we keep these programs in mind if there is any overload of the system on April 6. I dearly hope there won't be, but in the event there is, these programs can reach the majority of Canadians and we can get to them very quickly. I wanted to point that out as a plan B that we can put in place.

There are some interface problems between the first program and the new emergency assistance announced for businesses. Some of them are just eligibility criteria and how we move from layoff back to rehiring, but there is a real problem I'd like to point out to you. After the initial CERB was announced, there were interviews with many different employment lawyers who warned employers that they could be subject to lawsuits for layoffs that they're making under the program because it's technically not permitted. I just want to point it out to you as a red flag. Perhaps there should be a period during which there would be protection of employers too, for example if a layoff occurred within two weeks following the CERB announcement.

We absolutely need to respect and protect workers' rights—there's no question about that—but in this case I think we've left small business employers open to a new vulnerability that was totally unintended.

I have just one or two more comments. I think the wage subsidy package is excellent. One of the problems, though, in comparing March to March is that many businesses were open for part of March, some of them up to the third week in March, and they may not have experienced the 30% reduction that's required. Nonetheless, they will still now have to lay off their employees while still wanting to retain their relationship with them. How do we deal with those kinds of circumstances? If businesses may have to lay off some people and not others, how do they deal with the on and off?

I have just one or two comments on the business loans, which were, I think, very important. Of course, businesses would prefer not to take on any more debt. That's just a caveat. Many would prefer deferrals on rent, utilities and insurance payments.

One question people have had is whether small businesses that are not incorporated are eligible for the $40,000 loan to be provided by the banks. It appears when people are talking that this is the case, but I've seen some fine print from some organizations saying that they are not, so some clarification would be very helpful.

On the role of the BDC, that's excellent. However, I've seen in very, very recent correspondence that the BDC has been asking for extensive reporting and questions to be answered, even by people who already have an established relationship with that organization. I would hope that under these circumstances we can minimize those administrative and eligibility requirements.

I can speak to charities. I won't do that now, but I can if there are any questions on that aspect.

My final point is this: Now is too soon to say what we could have done in retrospect. I recognize that; we have to get through the crisis. However, what I worry about is that when we come out, I hope sooner than later, at the other end and say we are going to rebuild everything that was in place, in many circumstances—for example, nursing homes for seniors and benefits for Canadians who are really missed in the current income security system—we don't necessarily want to go back to where we were.

What I'm recommending is that there be some kind of reconstruction advisory group, a group that can come together and make some proposals about where we could be going in the future so that we can avoid some of the problems that we have faced and that we're trying to address right now.

Thank you very much for your time and your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, Sherri.

We will turn now to the musicians' guild of Quebec and Mr. Fortin, chief executive officer.

[Luc Fortin, Chief Executive Officer, Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes du Québec]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.

My name is Luc Fortin. I am the president and CEO of the Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes, the Quebec Musicians' Guild, Local 406 of the Canadian Federation of Musicians. The Canadian Federation of Musicians represents 14,000 professional musicians. The Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes has 3,300 members in Quebec.

I'm very grateful to you for inviting me to appear before the Standing Committee on Finance.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the remarkable work of the Canadian government and Parliament in these very difficult times in response to COVID-19. This crisis has caused millions of Canadians to suddenly lose their livelihoods. You have shown creativity and compassion in developing, in a very short period of time, a series of exceptional measures that will enable Canadian businesses and all Canadians to get through this extraordinary crisis. You have had to work under very short deadlines and under pressure. It is therefore normal to have to make adjustments when you become aware of certain situations whose magnitude you had not previously suspected.

One of the issues involves the Canada emergency response benefit, the temporary help that self-employed people are entitled to receive, which provides $2,000 a month for four months.

Since mid-March, our members—musicians and freelancers—have suddenly lost all their music contracts as a result of the closure of concert venues and the ban on gatherings. They thought they were entitled to the Canada emergency response benefit. However, there is a problem: under the current eligibility rules, only those who expect to have no employment or self-employment income for at least 14 consecutive days during the initial four-week period are eligible; for the next three four-week periods, they must not expect to have employment income.

Music is usually a precarious profession. Contracts are not regular and revenues fluctuate. Like many other artists, our members often rely on other sources of income to stabilize their situation. Even after losing all of their primary income, if they are unfortunate enough to continue to receive small earnings from secondary or other employment, they will not be eligible for the Canada emergency response benefit. The rules are too strict; no income, however small, is possible. Why should they not also be entitled to emergency assistance during the crisis when they find themselves destitute?

We have received hundreds of emails, Facebook messages and calls from our members who will no longer have enough income for their basic needs. They feel abandoned. I'll give you some of the many, many examples from our members.

A member informed us that, following the closure of her school due to the pandemic, the school board has decided to honour its private lesson contracts and pay teachers every two weeks until June. Our member has asked not to be paid for fear of not being eligible for the Canada emergency response benefit, but the school board says there is nothing it can do. What should she do? She will receive $53 every two weeks. She cannot live on that and she will not get the $2,000. That's unbelievable.

Another member told us that he was not eligible for federal assistance because of a two-hour weekly teaching assignment for which he will continue to be paid during the containment measures. Yet he has lost all of his main income from freelancing, which was about $23,000 a year, which meant a minimum of $3,500 from March to May. The best solution he has found is to sublet his apartment. He will live with friends and family for about a year.

Finally, according to another musician, some symphony orchestras have offered to compensate musicians for concerts cancelled due to the crisis and give them from 25% to 50% of lost income to help them subsist. These small amounts will be deposited during the months of April and May. According to what he understands, even if he has not been working since March 13, he will not be eligible for benefits because he will receive this small compensation for cancelled concerts.

I'm sure you understand that this situation is counterproductive. I am counting on your creativity and compassion to find solutions so that all those Canadian workers who really need the Canada emergency response benefit can use it to get through the crisis.

Thank you for listening to me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, Luc, and thank you for those quotes of some of your membership. They're valid points.

Now we go to Nora Spinks, president and CEO of the Vanier Institute. Please go ahead, Nora.

[Nora Spinks, President and Chief Executive Officer, Vanier Institute of the Family]

Good afternoon. Hello, everyone. It's good to be back with you. It seems like just a few days since we last met in Ottawa, and it seems like a lifetime ago. Here we are in this new normal, or new interim normal anyway, and although I'd prefer to be there with you in person, it's great that we have this technology to be able to connect by phone.

I'd like to share remarks of gratitude and appreciation for all the hard work and the long hours that all of you are putting in to make sure Canadians are safe. I hope you and your loved ones are managing well under these challenging circumstances.

Since we last met, the institute has continued to work on the family well-being index and adding in figures and bringing in data related to the pandemic and how families are managing and coping, or not. We've continued to build on the policy monitor to have it expanded to include a special section on what governments are doing related to the pandemic. Our research consortium now has over 165 active participants who are working with us to pull together new data that will allow us to monitor how individuals and families are doing as we go through this next phase of pandemic planning and preparation.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm the CEO of the Vanier Institute, which is a research and education organization that was founded by Georges Vanier back in 1965. We are a national resource, so we are here for you to be able to make informed decisions and to apply evidence to the decision-making that you're a part of on a day-to-day basis. Our primary role is to expedite research to practice, so what we've been doing in recent weeks is working with our primary partners at Statistics Canada, the Association for Canadian Studies and Leger polling, and conducting weekly research on how families are managing, what's happening with their family life, their family experiences, and their expectations and aspirations. We've been asking them how they feel about the government measures and the kinds of things they're finding particularly useful and I thought I would just take a couple of minutes to share with you some of the highlights from the last couple of weeks.

Each week we go to the field and we collect some of the same data week over week and then we add one or two questions that are variable that allow us to dig a bit deeper. We are accumulating this data so that we'll be able to look at things over time. The questions we're asking today are also linking back to some of the existing data from the general social survey on families and the general social survey on caregiving and time use, to be able to look at pre-pandemic, early COVID, mid-COVID, late COVID and then ultimately post-pandemic, so that we'll be able to learn from these experiences, and each of the other witnesses has talked about how important that's going to be as a group.

We have more data than we have expertise, time and resources to manage, so we would welcome any additional assistance that is available to be able to drill down a bit deeper. There's a hunger for this information. Just this morning I was doing 30 separate interviews from coast to coast to coast, sharing just one data point on how couples were managing living in close quarters. I want to share with you several things.

One is based on what we've done in previous years, looking at how families manage disruptions and crises. Whether it's fires in Fort Mac, tornadoes in Dunrobin or ice storms and snowstorms, etc., we know that for all systems, when under stress and strain, all strengths and weaknesses are magnified, amplified and intensified. What we want to do is to learn how the magnification, amplification and intensification of strengths can be harnessed, leveraged and built on and how the weaknesses can be managed.

I'll give just a couple of quick highlights. The good news is that most couples are doing quite well, most families are faring quite well, despite the uncertainty and lack of predictability and precariousness around finances. Eight in 10 couples said they were feeling well-supported by their partners.

We know that of those who are feeling supported, those who do not have children living at home are at a slightly higher number, but not much, and those who do have children at home are indicating that they are engaging in more meaningful conversations with their partners and that they feel their relationships are actually strengthening as a result.

That's true for men and women, but men more so, and men with children even more.

The relationships are highest and people feel closest in British Columbia, at 44%, and in Quebec it's 40%. What we're interested in finding out is whether over time—because B.C. and Quebec have had more intensity in a shorter period of time—the rest of Canada follow suit, or whether it is just a cultural issue. We'll be able to report on that in another week or two.

The good news is that only 16% are arguing more during the pandemic, although we are seeing and expecting a further uptick in family violence. If we look at some of the international experiences, we see that places like Italy are finding a 30% increase in domestic violence. We will be tracking and tracing that as well over time.

I want to share with you a couple of highlights from some of the microstudies that we've been doing, particularly on individuals new to Canada. We've divided them up between those who have been here for more than five years and those who have been here for five years or less.

The fears associated with contracting COVID are much greater for those who have been here for less than five years, but both categories of immigrants—those who have been here at least five years and those who've been here less than five years—are significantly higher in their fear factor than non-immigrants.

Fear about financial obligations among those with less than five years' residence is almost double what it is for non-immigrants. Among those who are saying they're not managing well, people are managing less well the shorter the period of time they've been in the country.

A big one that I think is important is looking at how people feel in terms of their circle of support around them. Across Canada, 90% of non-immigrants in Canada say that they have somebody they can depend on in case of emergency. That drops dramatically down to less than 76% for those who have been here less than five years.

Part of that is related to information. We know that they're not getting information, supports and resources in the same way, in part because of language barriers, so we are asking where people are getting their information in order to be able to recommend how best to target communication and how best to communicate the resources and supports that are available to them.

That's just a snapshot. We will be collecting this data week over week, as I mentioned. We do have it drilled down to provincial levels and across genders and socio-economic status and a number of other indicators. The dilemma that we're faced with is that we have more data than we have analysts, so although we're using human resources from universities and Statistics Canada, we don't have enough resources to carry on this work in a deep and meaningful way. I'm just planting that idea. If there are resources available and you're interested in getting more of this information at a more granular level, we'd be happy to provide it for you with additional resources.

Thank you so much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, Nora.

We will now turn to a six-minute round of questions. We'll start with Mr. Poilievre and then go to Mr. Sorbara.

Go ahead, Pierre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Nora, I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your last name. I wonder if you can email to the chair the links to all that valuable data you shared so he can could distribute those, and thank you for your testimony.

[Nora Spinks]

I'd be most happy to.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

My question is for Dr. Mintz.

Dr. Mintz, you have probably more experience in Finance Canada and in economics than almost anyone in the country. The biggest gap I see right now in all of the stabilization programs is small business. Small businesses have very thin margins and limited cash reserves. Their revenues have dropped, in most cases, by 100%. Data is now coming out of small business organizations suggesting that something like a third of these businesses will never open again. If we don't get cash into their hands immediately, we are going to have an enormous segment of our economy literally erased, and a huge part of our GDP will vanish with it.

What is the single fastest way to get cash back into their coffers?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Go ahead, Jack.

[Dr. Jack Mintz]

Thank you.

This is a comment particularly at the federal level, but also for a number of the provinces, in fact, maybe most of them. I think there needs to be a lot more use of faster means of trying to get money into the hands of businesses, and to some extent, individuals. Some of it is okay, but let me give the wage subsidy program as an example, which I think can be very important for small businesses, although there are some other issues that are important that I'll talk about in a moment.

The wage subsidy program is relying on a distribution by the federal government's setting up a portal, which will take six weeks to do and who knows how long after that for money to actually get paid out. I hate to say it, but I've had bad experience in governments with portal creations. Sometimes they can be much more problematic than one thinks.

It does make me wonder, especially when it comes to the business side, why we don't use the banking system, which has a tremendous network that can reach all businesses, as a way of trying to get applications done through the banks and getting that information into governments. As well, as the banks already know the firms and what kind of situation they're in, they're able to get the data very quickly to them and the money would be provided very quickly through the banking system out to small businesses. I'm not a complete expert on how to do that exactly in the sense of all the details that would be involved, but I really do think we need to use some mechanisms that go faster than simply things being set up in that way.

I also think at the federal level there's too much reliance on BDC and EDC for distribution of funds. That is not to say they aren't fine organizations—it's not a criticism of them—but potentially they could get overwhelmed. Again, the banks themselves all have relationships with businesses already that need the funding, and I think various types of distributions should be done through them.

Finally, on the wage subsidy, there are some particular issues that I think are critical for many businesses right now, especially at the small end. The first is that with the wage subsidy program itself, based on a 30% loss in revenues, I think it's appropriate that you want to have something in place. Some businesses are going to do fine and are doing fine. These include, for example, grocers. It includes those in delivery. Some of the restaurants are doing okay because they have a very good take-out and delivery system, etc. I think some of them have not had collapsing revenues or not nearly as bad, and so I think it's appropriate to have some measure of that.

We have to remember that there are firms that have very small margins. I wouldn't say very small—they make money—but their margins may be 10% or 15%, and so a 30% decline in revenue can actually put a business in jeopardy. While the information given on how people are coping with the pandemic right now is positive, and it's nice to hear that, as we go further along and as we potentially go into June before people can start getting back to work, there are going to be more people in jeopardy, including small businesses, as well as many individuals, and it's going to get harder and harder for them to meet their bills.

That's why I think it's really important to get the funding out soon.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Dr. Mintz, I have a follow-up question.

One of the things that I believe CRA could execute on a dime is to return the GST that small businesses with, say, more than five employees have collected over the last six months to a year. If you're a business with half a million dollars in gross revenue, that would mean, after credits, probably about 20 grand in your coffers. That's money that you could use to pay your emergency rent, your utilities and other immediate costs. You could also front-end the wages you're going to use to eventually claim the wage subsidy.

What do you think about refunding, say, six months to a year of GST to small businesses?

[Dr. Jack Mintz]

Well, I think that's an interesting proposal. In fact, you can attach it to some of the other programs as a way of getting a very quick down payment and then clawing back some of the other programs that are being made available. This way you're not building up on—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

The reason we proposed it—

[Dr. Jack Mintz]

Just on the GST, though, we have to remember that some businesses are exporters and don't charge a lot of GST, or they might be an exempt business, so they don't actually collect much GST.

I think that if you want a kind of general approach so that everybody gets support, mechanisms that allow for a quick refund are good ways of trying to get money into the hands of businesses right away. That's why I was suggesting the banking system as well, because it's another alternative—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. We're slightly over in that realm, but that's not a problem. I think we have lots of time in our two hours.

Mr. Sorbara, you're up next.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon, everybody. Please, everyone stay safe. Let's all get through this in due time.

I want to thank all four presenters for their feedback. We had the Caledon Institute's description of the immediacy of response, simplified administrative activity and eligibility, and the Vanier Institute's as well, and to Mr. Mintz, with whom I've chatted before, thank you for all the work you're doing in Alberta and advocating for small businesses across the country.

I want to make a couple of quick points before I ask a question.

First of all, I have to say thank you to the 7,000 CRA employees who have volunteered to help deliver services to Canadians in the coming days via the Canada emergency response benefit, and then in delivering the Canada emergency wage subsidy.

For everybody on the line, we have a direct deposit route, so if you have a My Account or My Business Account with CRA, once you put your application in, you'll receive your funds directly from CRA within three days. The waiting time is very short.

In fact, as they are coming, I'd like to point out that the GST top-up, which was scheduled for May, is coming next week, so $5.5 billion will be delivered to Canadians from coast to coast to coast. I think that over 15 million Canadians called, or 11 or 12 million families. We can get the exact number, but it's around that. Resources are being delivered, and for families afterward we'll get the Canada child benefit out as well. A lot of good things are happening.

Mr. Mintz, as you well know, the number that was put out by Finance within the last 36 hours is $570 billion in both direct and indirect support to the economy. I think one thing we have done really well on the wage subsidy is to have no cap on it. There is no limit on the subsidy amount for an eligible claim. If you are a manufacturing company with two or three hundred employees and business is down, you're going to able to apply.

Look at the CERB versus what they've done in the United States or other jurisdictions. It is $2,000 a month in your pocket within three days if you have direct deposit. That is there to help Canadians.

Now I'd like to ask a question of the Caledon Institute. With these measures that have been taken, what else do you think we need to do? This is a discussion we're having from coast to coast to coast. We're all working together—the provinces, regions, municipalities and the federal government. What else would you like to see? I think we're doing quite a bit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Go ahead, Ms. Torjman.

[Sherri Torjman]

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Sorbara, and for your question.

I agree with you entirely. I think that these initiatives have been excellent and I think that they will provide some tremendous help to Canadians.

I think what we're trying to point out is that there are some questions around the eligibility criteria, and if the government can do anything to help clarify those processes and procedures, it would be extremely helpful.

When Luc Fortin was making his presentation earlier, he was pointing out the problems that self-employed musicians are experiencing with the eligibility criteria for the CERB. If there were some way to field questions from Canadians online or through a direct line and to figure out some of the challenges they are facing in accessing these funds, that would be fantastic, because the measures are in place.

I think there may be some problems that people experience inadvertently. It wasn't the intention to leave them out. It was either the way in which this is being—

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

Yes, but if I could jump in, the intention from the beginning—and we're in a very extraordinary time in modern history—was to help as many Canadians, be they self-employed.... We know that over five million Canadians are not eligible—

[Sherri Torjman]

Exactly, yes.

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

—for EI, so we've created the CERB to help the self-employed, to help those people who, unfortunately, have been directly impacted by COVID-19. I'd like to use the approach that we are throwing a lot of balls and we want them all to land. Instead of just landing one in the hoop, we have a lot of hoops to hit and we have to get them all in. Just as on the GST, where we've done that perfectly, we're going to do that on the CCB, and so forth on the other programs we put in place.