There's no question about that. If you look at StatsCan data on labour income, you'll see this very strange development, from a historical perspective, which was that as the pandemic hit there was a dramatic increase in the unemployment rate. The transfer from the government to households was so large, so generous, that you actually saw an increase in the labour income even though you had this jump in the number of unemployed people. Very clearly, those supports helped prevent a significant amount of hardship, no question about it.
On January 24th, 2022. See this statement in context.