Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the standing committee.
My name is Loren Remillard, and I'm president and CEO of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.
The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1873 with a clear purpose to foster an environment in which Winnipeg business and our community at large can prosper. Today, the chamber is the largest business voice in our community, representing greater than 2,000 member organizations. Our members come from all sizes and sectors, including charities, non-profits, social enterprise and, of course, the private sector. Given this fact, my comments today will be more general in scope but will touch upon the construction and manufacturing sectors, both of which are key drivers of Manitoba's economy.
A path to prosperity inevitably includes plans to adjust for adversity. As such, businesses, governments and individuals often have emergency preparedness or continency plans, yet the COVID pandemic was such that preparing a game plan to deal with what has transpired and is transpiring worldwide was a near impossibility. Hindsight is 20/20, and I'm sure there will be much written about lessons learned for future preparedness.
As the pandemic wave washed upon Canada's shores, the federal government moved responsibly to protect and support our health and our economy. On support to the business community, the federal government's response can best be characterized as ready, shoot, aim. Now, that's not a criticism. Remarkably, while the government may not have scored in every attempt, it did hit the net nine out of 10 times.
As a chamber, one of our principal asks of any government is to be open-minded and receptive to our advice and guidance. With COVID, the federal government has been more than receptive to business advice; it has proactively sought it out and embraced it. While the government is deserving of recognition for its efforts, so too is it of two constructive criticisms.
First, the announcement of a program and then a delay, days and sometimes weeks until details were released, caused much confusion and difficulties for business needing to make decisions. Perfect is the enemy of good, but program details needed to be delivered much more quickly than was the case.
Second, the lag between the program details and the opening of applications was highly challenging for business, in particular regarding the Canada emergency wage subsidy. The lag was such that many were forced to lay off staff. That would not have been the case with a shorter time frame from announcement to application.
Specific to the construction sector, the wage subsidy will cease just around the time that many in the sector—notably in Manitoba, our residential home builders—would be looking to ramp up. Using city of Winnipeg data and extrapolating it to all of Manitoba, the construction sector in Manitoba has already seen a reduction in activity of $86 million since March. If similar trends continue for May and June, the impact will be over $230 million by July.
Staying with the lag theme, many of the programs announced to date rightly deal with here-and-now pressures; however, for manufacturers, pre-COVID orders may have helped them manage through the past few months. The impact of COVID for many, though, will be felt not now but when production of pre-COVID orders gives way to non-existent March to June orders.
Also, recognize that each sector's subsectors are seeing different impacts. If you're a manufacturer of PPE or wayfinding signage, you're currently at maximum capacity. If you manufacture and maintain aerospace parts, dark skies are ahead. In Winnipeg, home of Canada's third largest aerospace sector, we've just learned that one of our largest plants will bear the bulk of the company's Canadian workforce reductions. Yet, within our garment, printer supply and craft brewing industries, many have pivoted to meet the PPE and sanitizer needs of our entire country. A sector lens on the Canada emergency wage subsidy and other programs would have been beneficial to stagger the start of the program to coincide with sector and subsector timelines.
One additional comment of importance to construction is the need for greater flexibility within existing federal infrastructure programming. We are told that Manitoba has more than $6 billion in program submissions for the investing in Canada infrastructure program, with many being shovel-ready. We urge the federal government to make the most of the current market conditions of competitive bid prices and extraordinarily low interest rates. To do so, the federal government must accelerate the ICIP approval process and enhance program flexibility.
In conclusion, the federal government is to be commended for its response to this crisis. Few in the world were around for the 1918 Spanish flu; thus, we were without the benefit of experience in charting a course.
While I hope that no future generations must endure that which we face today, I can say that the federal government's response will be a strong foundation for future pandemic preparedness.
Thank you.