When I get on a roll, it's bad.
Anyway, I've always said I'm a very good listener and when I was a social worker.... I've always been, I have to say, a good listener, but when I have an opportunity to talk, my gosh, just give me the stage.
Coming back to the matter at hand, among my constituents in Moncton, Riverview and Dieppe during this pandemic, during the whole issue of a new throne speech and the issue of prorogation, no one spoke to me necessarily of prorogation. But when we talked about readjusting and retuning and redefining what our goals and objectives were, my colleagues, my constituents wanted to make it clear that, front and centre, they wanted their government to be there and to continue to be there for them during the pandemic and post-pandemic.
I can tell you that when we talked about the Canada emergency response benefit, and when we all think of when we first started.... I'm looking at my friend, Irek, here and I'm sure that we asked him a lot of questions, as he was the parliamentary secretary to the minister responsible, I believe. We certainly had a lot of questions with respect to what CERB was going to look like. Again, the program may not have been perfect, but we certainly were there to help millions of Canadians.
When I look at the CERB, the Canada emergency response benefit, in my province of New Brunswick alone that program helped 165,000 New Brunswickers. In my little province, we have a population of 757,000. When you stop and think that 165,000 New Brunswickers benefited from that program, that's about one in five New Brunswickers, when you break it down.
More importantly, a lot of women were the ones who had to leave the workforce and had to use those benefits. Yesterday I met with a group of people in the care economy. I shared with them that 63% of the people who had to leave the labour market were women. Again, a lot of them were negatively impacted, so we certainly have to be there for them.
The Canada emergency response benefit certainly helped a lot of people in our province. People want us to be there for them in the short term and the long term.
The other pillar that we have to look at when it comes to the economic programs that have been put in place is the Canada emergency business account. Again, why did we prorogue, why did we feel that we had to get things back and to look at the priorities because of the pandemic? I don't know about you guys, but folks in my riding, in small and medium-sized businesses, were really grateful for that program.
There's a small vendor here in Moncton called the Starving Artist. I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but it's a really great co-op, a small business. Actually it's quite a big shop and many local artists go there and sell their pieces of art. It's a mom-and-pop shop but if we weren't there to provide them with the business account, that organization would be closed. They actually support over 200 local artists. If ever you come to Moncton, Mr. Long... I know you're always talking about Saint John, but come to Moncton and look at the Starving Artist shop. It's quite a neat spot. Over Christmas I tried to support local as much as possible and got all of my Christmas gifts there because they were just really great.
Again, those types of benefits that have been put in place have really helped these small and medium-sized businesses. Again, when we look at proroguing and what we needed to do in the short term and also post-pandemic, we have to look at all of that.
The other program as well that I know of, which I heard a lot about this summer as well, was the issue of the Canada emergency commercial rent assistance program. That's another program that many—