Absolutely. I'll just clarify the numbers. About 85% of companies said that they fully supported the government action across the board on all the measures they've taken, and that's federal and provincial. About 55% of our members said that they used the wage subsidy program, which is a substantial number of companies, so it has broad use in the manufacturing sector.
The CERB program, though, has been a very different type of program. We were worried at the very beginning about the potential distortion effect that that program could have in our sector. I won't talk about other sectors that were much harder hit by COVID-19 than we were. However, what we were worried about was that if companies don't retain the relationship with their employees, it becomes a lot harder for them to restart. Before the wage subsidy program was announced, before the CERB program was announced, we were talking to officials and saying, “Do not do an EI-type system”, which is what it turned out to be. “How about a direct wage subsidy like we saw in Europe and other parts of the world?” That would maintain that relationship; the companies already have payroll; and it's really easy to handle it. I think the government recognized pretty quickly when the CERB program was put into place that it caused, frankly, a pretty significant number of layoffs across all industries. The government immediately went to a wage subsidy program, which actually caused a lot of our members to recall furloughed employees after only a week or so. I think it would have worked immediately.
Secondarily, it is working. We had a conversation on Monday with Minister Morneau and with several companies. Fiat Chrysler, for example, was one of them, and it specifically said that it started off operations at all three of its Canadian plants on one shift because of the wage subsidy and that it would be moving to two shifts.
That's just one specific example and one statement just this week, but we're aware of many companies that are doing that because it's there. If the wage subsidy isn't there, they won't be recalling those people, and frankly, many companies probably would shut their doors.