Just as a little background, our firm has over 100 offices across Canada, from St. John's to Vancouver Island. We've really seen the impact in the last year on small and medium-sized businesses right across the country. Quite frankly, I've been in this business for about 35 years. The last time there was anything similar to this, and it was before I was really in practice, was in the early 1980s, when prime was 21%.
At the end of the day, this is a once-in-a-generation, once-in-a-century situation. The programs that have been put in place have been a lifeline to our businesses. We all know that small businesses are the drivers of the economy.
We came here today to talk about what we saw as inflexibility in the programs. Really, what we see there is that it was pulled together very quickly and with speed. Parliament did a wonderful job, and I think the inflexibility is just the law of unintended consequences. Government officials are doing a wonderful job supporting small and medium-sized businesses, but there's always more you can do. We would just really encourage all the levels of government to help.