Thanks for this question. My ideological previous position had me curious about whether a basic income would have been appropriate when this pandemic first revealed itself to be of the magnitude that we now understand it to be. When we actually dug in to understand the best path forward, there were certain shortcomings on the approach that our colleagues from the NDP had been calling for.
If we simply extend a $2,000 payment to all Canadians monthly, a few problems come up. One of the primary issues is that it's not particularly well targeted. We tried to develop programs that reach Canadians who are in need as a result of this pandemic. For example, the members of this committee, who are all still working and earning an income and have not seen a decrease in what they take home each month, don't necessarily need access to a universal payment.
Similarly, the timeliness of our ability to send money to all Canadians is not as simple as it seems, on first blush. There's not a “send money now” button sitting in the Department of Finance offices where we can simply have money magically appear in accounts, despite what some people may think, because CRA has a fairly comprehensive dataset. We found that it was quicker to deliver benefits directly to Canadians in need by using existing mechanisms, such as the Canada child benefit or the GST rebate program, and developing a single new simple application portal through the CERB, which has now provided benefits directly to seven million Canadians who've seen an interruption to their income as a result of this pandemic.
I just want to point out the remarkable work of our public service. At one point in time, this particular program was processing, I believe, a thousand applications per minute. This is a remarkable achievement in government. Quite frankly, in my lifetime, I don't know that I've seen a more impressive rollout of a single policy to date.