Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses. We hope your families are safe and healthy, and we appreciate your being here today.
My first questions will be for Mr. Kelly. I hope that the technology will co-operate and that you will be able to answer them.
As you mentioned, the issue of rent abatement is extremely important. Other countries—France, Denmark and Australia—have put in place programs to help support the small business sector. Gord Johns, the NDP small business critic, and I wrote to the Minister of Finance last week and urged him to put in place for May 1 a rent abatement program that would allow property owners to basically put rent in abatement for small business owners and get 66% of that back from the federal government.
How important is it to have that type of program? One hundred per cent of the rent abatement would be written off, the small business could survive and the property owner would get most of that reimbursed. It's that shared sacrifice that I think we're all looking for to make sure that we can weather this crisis. How effective would an approach like that be?