Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
We must value our seniors. We must value their wisdom, knowledge and talents, and address the challenges they face in society.
To protect jobs and livelihoods, our government put in place strong measures to protect businesses and workers. We had to do this because the virus could only be slowed or stopped by limiting social contacts. This meant reducing economic activity. It meant shutting down workplaces and later limiting the number of people restaurants serve. It meant asking people to stay home from work if they were sick or their children were sick. It simply would have been unfair to ask businesses to shut down and workers to stay home without compensating them for lost income.
Within one week of shutting down the country last March, our government announced a stimulus package, which included $27 billion in emergency aid for workers and businesses and $55 billion in tax deferrals. We injected billions of dollars into businesses to help with their cash flow and to keep workers on the payroll, while bolstering federal benefits and support programs for people who had lost their jobs.
This money really matters to our communities. Those funds helped Canadians pay for rent and groceries, and they helped businesses continue to pay their employees and their bills.
Our government created CERB, which helped more than eight million workers. We call our Etobicoke North community daily to hear how our families are doing, what additional help they need. We hear right across the board that CERB was a lifeline, which allowed people to pay for rent, groceries and transportation.
Our government put in place the Canada emergency wage subsidy, which supported three million Canadian workers to stay on the payroll.
Our local businesses are at the heart of our communities. They are our friends and neighbours. We can support them by ordering takeout from the restaurant down the street, shopping at the store around the corner or ordering online. These economic programs we have put in place are good reasons to hear directly from the Deputy Prime Minister.
Our government also understood that parents were worried about the costs of raising our children. That's why we invested in families. For the year 2021, we increased the Canada child benefit to a maximum of $6,765 per child under six years of age and $5,708 per child age six to 17. Later on, we invested $625 million in emergency federal support to ensure that safe, sufficient and affordable child care was available.
Our government understood that additional support was needed for local food banks and organizations. Without that support, COVID-19 would have had additional impacts on vulnerable communities. We know that many Canadians rely on food banks and local food organizations to feed their families and find support in hard times.
In our Etobicoke North community, I would like to thank the Salvation Army, the International Muslim Organization of Toronto and Mount Olive Church for the work they do to provide healthy and nutritious food to our families.
Our government understood that young Canadians were facing unprecedented challenges, so we doubled the Canada student service grant and created the Canada emergency student benefit. We wanted to ensure that students had the help they needed to continue their studies.
My own research area was pandemics and helping governments, industry, businesses and organizations prepare for a possible pandemic. In Etobicoke North, parents and teachers told me their concerns about their children heading back to school. As a former educator, I understood and that's why I pushed so hard for our government to invest $2 billion in the safe return to class fund in support of provinces and territories.
Our government was committed to protecting students and staff from the challenges of COVID-19. Learning is different this year. The school year has been difficult for many Canadians, including teachers, students and parents. Let me just say thank you to our educators for teaching during difficult times and inspiring the next generation.
Let me also acknowledge our children and young people. One year is a long time in their lives. One year for a five-year-old is 20% of their life, and for a 15-year-old is 7% of their life. We have asked so much of children.
Our students work so hard. Let's remember that all children are born curious. They innately discover, explore and ask questions and it's the job of all of us to inspire them, to encourage them, to reach for the stars and to make sure that every child has a place to shine. All these programs are good reasons we should hear from the Deputy Prime Minister.
I also fought very hard for a $1-billion investment in a national medical and research strategy to address COVID-19, because science and public health are key to fighting COVID-19, research for vaccines and treatment, support for clinical trials and expanded testing and modelling, but research matters beyond the pandemic. Research is a fundamental building block of our country that requires attention, nurture and support for a better future, environment and quality of life for all.
Hearing about investments in science and research would be another good reason to hear from our Deputy Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister understood that the best economic approach was to stop the spread of COVID-19, and until that was possible through a vaccine, the next best approach is to help Canadians, businesses and our families weather the pandemic without losing their livelihoods and without going broke.
Vaccine equity would be another good reason to hear from our Deputy Prime Minister. Vaccines are necessary to help the world move from locking down societies to locking down the virus. More transmission means more variants. The more variants that emerge, the more likely it is that they will evade vaccines. As long as the virus continues to circulate, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be disrupted and the economic recovery will be further delayed.
The global vaccination campaign represents the greatest moral test of our times. The many low-income countries [Technical difficulty—Editor]. I know Canada has agreed to top up its funding for vaccine rollouts in lower-income countries, pledging $75 million more to the COVAX international vaccine-sharing program. That new pledge brings Canada's total contribution to $940 million. It would be good to get the Deputy Prime Minister's thoughts on how the world needs to unite to produce and distribute sufficient vaccines for all, which means at least doubling manufacturing capacity around the world. This really matters.
The inequitable distribution of vaccines is a moral outrage. It makes no sense for stopping the spread of the disease and it's economically self-defeating.
Only together can we end this pandemic and recover. Only together can we revive our economies. We know that our eventual recovery will be faster and more complete in direct proportion to how much we limit the economic damage caused by the coronavirus. According to the World Bank, the pandemic pushed 124 million people into extreme poverty in 2020. The Economist estimates that two years of COVID-19 will create a downturn twice as deep as the Great Recession.
Hearing about the economic recovery would be another important reason to hear from the Deputy Prime Minister. We entered this crisis with significant fiscal firepower. When COVID-19 hit, Canada had the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7. I'd like [Technical difficulty—Editor] what investments will help our economy come back stronger than before. How are we going to lay a foundation for a green economy, an innovation economy and a fair economy that supports good jobs for all Canadians? We want to emerge from the pandemic healthier, wealthier and greener.