Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm going to turn to you, Mr. Guénette.
As we know, the way the U.S. tariffs are calculated changed at the beginning of April, affecting nearly a quarter of Quebec's exports. A 25% tariff applies to just about any product containing the slightest bit of steel or aluminum.
Businesses in the furniture sector have started to close. Since your membership spans all sectors, I imagine you represent people in the furniture sector. The Saint-Michel sawmill, in Saint‑Michel‑des‑Saints, recently announced that it had sought creditor protection under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.
Given all that, the Bloc Québécois suggested the government put a temporary wage subsidy in place for businesses that had to eliminate shifts or temporarily lay off workers, as a result of the new tariff calculation. The idea is to maintain the employment relationship between businesses and workers with expertise. We recommended that for two reasons.
The first reason is to prevent a situation where other businesses come in and scoop up those temporarily laid-off employees because their expertise is hard to find. The second reason is the employment insurance, or EI, system, which is set up actuarially to break even every seven years.
There was the pandemic crisis, and now there's another crisis. Allowing the EI system to deal with it, instead of addressing it through a wage subsidy, means that both employee and employer premiums will eventually have to be raised.
Where, then, do you stand on the Bloc Québécois's proposal and the government's pledge in Bill C‑30 to create a wage subsidy so that the employment relationship can be maintained?