Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Pohlmann, you warned us about the problems associated with repayment of the Canada emergency business account loan.
If the figures I have here are accurate, 19% of SMEs—that's 200,000—will be in serious trouble if the repayment schedule isn't pushed back a year.
We've often confronted the government on this, and we have the sympathy of many ministers, but there seems to be a problem with Ms. Freeland and the senior officials on her team. They think it would cost too much, and they want to turn the page on programs that were offered during the pandemic. We wonder what the costs associated with the bankruptcies of hundreds of thousands of SMEs would be.
What would you tell the minister to convince her to delay repayment by another year?