Excellent. Thanks so much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for joining us, and thank you for the work that you have been doing over the past number of weeks and months to help businesses survive this unprecedented pandemic that is causing a disruption in everyone's lives.
Two of the most important words that I think I heard in your opening remarks were “we heard”. You referred to the barbers that you have listened to, some folks working on farms, and other examples. I think that it's important to reflect on the number of extraordinary changes that have been made, often after an initial policy announcement has been done.
My experience in the past few years is that we put a lot of effort into consultation on the front end, tried to land a policy, and weren't particularly flexible after we completed consultation with stakeholders. I have been feeling refreshed at the willingness of the government to listen and shift course where it sees problems that have been highlighted.
I want to see if you can talk about the importance of this exercise in listening and how it's helped develop the policies, particularly when I look at big things like creating a 75% wage subsidy that was previously 10%, and at small things like extending access to those barbers who don't necessarily meet the payroll threshold or allowing credit unions to get money to communities through CEBA. There are probably dozens of changes that I could point to as examples. I want to get your perspective on what it's like to have to iterate as we go through, based on the feedback that we're hearing directly from Canadians who have been affected by this pandemic and who are looking for help from the federal government.