Thank you very much, Chair.
I'll be splitting my time with my colleague MP Fergus.
Thank you very much, Mr. Brière, for your testimony.
There was a terrific article in Maclean's magazine this week. The title is “Pulling off a bureaucratic miracle: How the CERB got done”. It's an excellent article, and I highly recommend everyone have a read of that. It talks about the fact that when the call went out to the CRA folks to get folks to work the phones to help people process their payments, their applications and whatnot, 7,500 folks from your outfit raised their hands and volunteered—tremendous work.
I know the UTE folks have been asked to work, as the article states, seven days a week, including an extra five hours on weekdays and a combined 15 hours on weekends, which amounts to about 80-hour workweeks.
I just want to read one excerpt from the article, which I think is important. It highlights the tremendous, heroic work of UTE folks:
Julian Nicholson, a CRA resource officer in Hamilton, Ont., helps colleagues navigate the CERB and, in spare moments, talks directly with taxpayers. He works 12-hour weekdays, as well as a shorter shift on Saturdays. Nicholson says in early April, he once took 185 calls in a single day. “This has been our moment,” he says.
Knowing the tremendous work the folks here have put forward, how have they managed to strike a work-life balance, with the tremendous pressure they've been under in the last few weeks?