Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Minister, I want to reiterate what I said earlier. We have a shortage of personal protective equipment in Canada because your government threw millions of face masks and 440,000 medical gloves in the dumpster. You also gave 16 tonnes of medical equipment to China when we most needed it. This, of course, has driven up prices here in Canada and driven down our stockpiles.
One thing you could do to mitigate the damage your government has done in this area is to take the HST off of those kinds of protective equipment. I know that much of it has been bought privately for long-term care facilities, seniors homes and other places that are not owned or run by government. I think you'll agree with me that people should not have to pay tax on that equipment. I encourage you to remove the HST. That would be a practical and simple thing to make it more affordable.
With regard to the CERB, I want to congratulate your government for listening to demands by numerous MPs, including me, to allow people on the CERB to work and earn some income. You've allowed them to earn up to $1,000, which is definitely an improvement over the original program. That only works out to about eight or nine days out of a month for a lot of workers. If their employer were to come along and say, “Good news. I have more work for you and I can pay you for it. Can you do some extra work?” a lot of them would have to say, “No, I'm afraid I can't because I'll lose my CERB and I'll be worse off working for more than a thousand dollars' worth of wages than I am right now.” Would you consider another methodology to allow people to earn more than that $1,000 so that they would always be better off taking extra hours and earning more wages?