Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Giroux, for your testimony this morning and for your service.
I think it's important to remind all Canadians who may be watching today of what Bill C-14 is and what we're studying here at committee. The only spending Parliament is being asked to approve through Bill C-14 is to introduce a temporary and immediate support for low- and middle-income families who are entitled to the CCB, the Canada child benefit, totalling up to $1,200 in 2021 for each child under the age of six; to provide the regional development agencies an additional $206.7 million; to replicate the CEBA loan limits for gap-filling programs and the RRRF gap-filling capacity; to ease the financial burden of student debt for up to 1.4 million Canadians by eliminating the interest on repayment of the federal portion of the Canada student loans and Canada apprentice loans for one year, 2021-22; to provide funding of up to $505.7 million as part of the new safe long-term care fund to support long-term care facilities, including funding to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection, outbreaks and deaths in supported care facilities; to provide additional funding of up to $133 million to support access to things like virtual care, mental health tools and substance use programming; and to provide up to $262.6 million for a suite of COVID-19 initiatives, including testing, medical research, countermeasures, vaccine funding and developments, border and travel measures and isolation sites. I think it's important to put that on record and to remind everyone of what Parliament is being asked to approve.
Having said that, I hear my colleagues on the opposition harping on the fact that there's the lack of a budget.
You're right that this is an unprecedented event. It has never happened before in our Canadian history. We've never had to deal with such a pandemic, and I think it merits keeping that in mind.
Having said that, Mr. Giroux, I'm interested to know what were or are your thoughts on the biweekly updates provided to the committee by the Department of Finance earlier last year.