Thank you, Chair.
Welcome, everyone.
Minister, I'd like to start by saying thank you to the CRA and all Canada Revenue Agency employees who, during the global pandemic, delivered, at an accelerated and never-before-seen pace, a number of programs to Canadian families and to Canadian individuals and businesses.
For example, Commissioner Hamilton, I'm looking at the Canada emergency wage subsidy. It had three and a half million applications and 460,000 unique approved applicants, and it delivered over $100 billion to Canadian businesses and supported over five million workers. That was delivered in record time by the CRA. It allowed us to recover and come out of the global pandemic faster than almost any other country in the world.
We all know the human consequences or costs during the pandemic, but we also know that the Government of Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency employees were there, working hard—tirelessly, I would say—at the time. I was a parliamentary secretary for the agency at the time.
I wanted to say thank you to the CRA and to all of its employees.
When we look back at history, in decades or in a few short years, we know this will be a textbook case of the efficiency of delivering government services and benefits to Canadians in their time of need. We were there for Canadians; we had their backs, as we always do.
We will be coming up to tax filing season in a few months.
This is for Commissioner Hamilton and the minister.
We've automated a number of benefits. What I mean by that is, once Canadians file their taxes, they automatically receive the benefits. I want to get a comment, Minister, on how important that is to our ability to reduce poverty levels, especially with the Canada workers benefit, and deliver those benefits to Canadians.
Commissioner Hamilton, do we have a rough idea of how many benefits and credits Canadians receive through filing their taxes?