Thank you, Chair and committee members, for inviting us to join you here today.
As was said, I'm accompanied by ESDC deputy minister Graham Flack, associate deputy minister Benoît Robidoux, and chief financial officer Mark Perlman.
I'm here today to speak to the main estimates for 2020-21, which represent a total of $68.6 billion in planned budgetary expenditures. This is a net increase of $3.8 billion over the 2019-20 main estimates. This is primarily due to an increase to old age security pension and guaranteed income supplement payments resulting from the planned increase in the average monthly benefit amount and changes in the number of beneficiaries.
These main estimates include funding for seniors pensions, learning and skills development, apprenticeship programming and transfers to provinces and territories. This money is spent to assist students to afford higher education, youth to gain valuable work experience, afford workers with apprenticeship opportunities and provide basic income security to seniors.
I and the officials are happy to speak in more detail to these main estimates.
Mr. Chair, since March 2020, our world has completely changed, but our government's priorities—supporting Canadian workers, investing in youth and helping people overcome barriers to training and working— remain the same.
Since March 2020 we've also had supplementary estimates (A), which were debated in the House in June, and supplementary estimates (B).
Mr. Chair, I will make two specific notes related to the supplementary estimates.
The first is on the Canada student grant program. The supplementary estimates (A) showed $912 million to reflect the total funding that could have been allocated for the CSSG. Given the cancellation of this program, this total has been adjusted and supplementary estimate (B) is $0. I note that all monies have been recovered.
Second, supplementary estimates (B) show an additional $28.5 billion in CERB payments under statutory authorities. This brings the proposed authorities for the CERB to $88.5 billion, which is for the full 28 weeks of the CERB. This helped almost nine million Canadians during a very difficult period.
I will conclude by highlighting the extraordinary measures we have taken to support workers, youth and persons with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the pandemic first shuttered our economy in March, we moved very quickly to support Canadians. This began with a moratorium on student loan repayments, the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canada emergency student benefit.
We also created thousands of jobs and training opportunities for youth and provided a one-time payment for persons with disabilities.
As of last Friday, payments were made to more than 1,642,000 persons with disabilities to help them with additional expenses incurred due to COVID-19.
As the CERB was coming to an end, we made changes to the EI system so that more people could access benefits, including regular and special benefits.
The EI system is currently the best tool at our disposal to support Canadian workers in this transition from emergency to recovery. Features like working while on claim, access to training and work-sharing provide incentives to work and help keep people connected to the labour market.
For Canadians who still don't qualify for EI, we introduced a complementary new suite of benefits: the Canada recovery benefit, the Canada recovery sickness benefit and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit.
The Canada recovery benefit, just like EI, has a requirement that people must be looking for work and has built-in integrity measures for the application process. Together these new measures are helping millions of Canadians in this challenging time.
Mr. Chair, the appropriations requested in both these main estimates and supplementary estimates (A) and (B) would allow us to continue to support Canadians during the pandemic and beyond.
I would now be pleased to answer any questions you might have.