I don't know if everyone here is familiar with the homebuyers' plan, but that allows you to take money out of your RRSP and you return it over the next 15 years. There's no penalty for taking it out, no tax. We are proposing a concept like that for COVID.
We are seeing that people are taking money out of their RRSPs right now. With regard to the cautions on why we would want to encourage people to withdraw from their RRSPs, doing a program like this would let people access them. They are being viewed right now as a rainy day fund for a lot of people. They're pulling money out and paying tax on it. They will never have that retirement room again in their RRSP, and they're taking out more than they maybe need right now to get to the net number because they have to pay the tax bill.
From those two perspectives, we believe it's very important to allow for an RRSP withdrawal. That RRSP withdrawal could be used to get them through tough times. It could be used to help them pay off some debt or their mortgage payments. It can help them fund some education. It can help them do things as simple as putting a loan into their company so they can continue to pay their workers.
We have the CEWS program. That's fantastic for a lot of businesses, but that CEWS program is really complicated. It has been extended, which we applaud because that's going to be necessary, but I think that in order for business owners and families to be able to maintain economic viability, it's going to be important to access funds wherever they are.