Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak.
We have had a very strong partnership with PSPC and with many government departments. We appreciate that. On behalf of our 20,000 members, we are very appreciative of the steps that have been taken to date by Parliament to help Canadians and businesses during this COVID-19 crisis.
As you've said, the safety of our workers and our communities was always the number one priority as we worked through the pandemic. I think we've shown that we were very resilient and moved quickly to continue to deliver on the projects. Some of those costs would include, of course, all the PPE, including the masks as well as the sanitation. In some cases projects were delayed, so we had to extend the leasing, which led to financial costs.
In terms of physical distancing, we could have fewer people on the work site than we normally would—one person per truck, for example. We could have only a certain number of people in an area for a certain amount of time and we would have to look at the sanitation of equipment, pre and post. There are numerous costs that have been incurred by the industry, in terms of both productivity and hard costs. Our ask is that the government, which we know is a responsible and fair owner, will reimburse us for these costs on federal projects.
Normally these sorts of things would be treated at the end of the contracts, but for some of these federal contracts, that could be 12 months to three years from now. Many of our contractors are very small. Seventy per cent of our industry consists of small and medium-sized enterprises. Getting them this cash is very important now as we lead into the ramp-up and we help Canada get back to economic recovery.