This truly is unprecedented. You're absolutely right.
We take pride in the way we listen to Canadians in the course of developing policies, programs and funding for the range of supports in the normal course of doing business in government. With the global pandemic, the absolute urgency of getting support out to businesses and Canadians was the focus. We listened to Canadians, literally right from the very beginning, and we continue to listen to those businesses so we can reflect on where there may have been a gap, where something may need to be changed and adapted along the way.
Some of those adaptations also mean making legislative changes. I thank all our colleagues from all sides of the House for coming in and helping us as team Canada to introduce the wage subsidy, as an example. That required legislation for the size of the emergency support package we've had to put out in an effort to support Canadians.
The Canada emergency business account is an example of how we listened to colleagues on this committee and listened to colleagues from all sides who had input and feedback from their own constituents and businesses about what was or wasn't working.
My department, right from the get-go, has a call every single day throughout this entire pandemic. It started with tens of businesses and grew to hundreds of businesses. Now it's over 1,000 businesses, as well as business associations. They talk to my department every single day so we can understand the issues they are facing and the needs they are dealing with. They represent different sectors, so we are making the adaptations, making sure we have invested in their regional development agencies and community futures programs to ensure additional support is there for smaller businesses in rural communities.
We are making sure we are providing support through the industrial research assistance program for those high-growth innovative companies that weren't experiencing the kinds of revenue losses that are calculated by many other companies, but for that sector it is a revenue loss.