Thank you.
One thing that low-income families and low-income seniors do when they have a surplus in their account is transfer it to the grocery store to buy groceries. They may transfer it to a mechanic to fix their car. They may transfer it to creditors in order to pay down their debt or to cover interest. I guess it's too bad they can't call that a dividend payment, eh? Wouldn't that be nice? Then maybe they'd have more champions around this table. But they can't.
That didn't stop the government from having very strong opinions about whether or not it was appropriate for them to have taken pandemic benefits in the first place, particularly if they received the Canada child benefit or the Canada worker benefit or the guaranteed income supplement. Nobody said, “Well, hey, let's call it a dividend and call it a day.” They said, “Let's take the money back. And if we're going fix it up at all, we're going to do it after having dragged it out for months.”
Some of them are living in their cars. Others are living on the street. Others have eviction notices coming up while they try to pay for their medication and figure out what they're going to do as winter sets in. Maybe we as a committee need to look at how we could classify the essential transfers of seniors to get the essentials they need as “dividends” so that they could have the same protections these large companies seem to have. I think that's maybe something we should mark down for work on the agenda of this committee on a rather urgent basis.
It was very nice to get a technical answer from department officials. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, these are the same officials who were here earlier in the week or last week. Pardon me; it's all blending together. There have been a lot of meetings.
I felt like I got a more clear technical answer about my own amendment than I did about the bill they helped design for the government. I'm going to have to spend some time reflecting on that. I hope they will too, because the kind of technical response they came prepared to give today is exactly the kind of technical response we've been demanding of them for well over 14 hours now on the bill they helped draft. Now we know they're capable of it. That's a new discovery as of tonight. If this amendment has served to do nothing else, it's proved that departmental officials actually are a lot smarter than they sometimes give themselves credit for at this committee. I hope we see a commitment going forward to their continuing to show this kind of competence as we continue to ask questions.
I would say also that I just don't accept the argument that this was a rush job. I mean, come on; we had an election, and how long did it take for Parliament to come back? It's no secret at this table that I'm a member of the fourth party. We have 25 seats in Parliament. That's not news to anybody. We have a government that says they actually agree with the principle of the amendment. Why is it me trying to draft the amendment through the House of Commons drafters, without any of the technical expertise of the department, when the government members say they're on board? It's not like I was in the room and said, “No, don't put that in there” and then I changed my mind. They knew about this.
In fact, this committee in the last Parliament made recommendations on this very issue, so it's a little rich to hear from government members that they're on board, if only we had more time. They controlled the time. They drafted the bill, so no more crocodile tears around here, thank you very much, on questions of timing or technical expertise.
I'll continue to do the best job I can with the resources I have. New Democrats will continue to ask Canadians to give us more resources at election time so that this kind of dog-and-pony show is no longer the rule but just the exception.
All of that said, I do actually have a question for the officials. If we were to pass this amendment, and if the companies applying for wage subsidy support on a go-forward basis were to get a letter explaining to them the very things that departmental officials explained today at the table, they would have the information they needed in order to make an informed decision, as Mr. Chambers rightly pointed out. Would they not also be getting more notice about the implications of their application for pandemic help than seniors on the guaranteed income supplement received when they applied, in good faith, to the CERB and were not notified that it would later come out of their guaranteed income supplement? Is it fair to say that they'd be getting more notice?
That's a nice, crisp, yes-or-no answer, please. I am prepared to answer the question as well, if departmental officials aren't sure which one to choose or if they don't have a coin to flip.