Thank you, Mr. Sabia. Also, thank you to your department for everything that it's done.
I would respectfully differ. I think the numbers would tell us a slightly different story. With regard to the original projections for the CEWS program, it was undersubscribed by a good 50%, depending on which numbers you use, in accordance with your own projection. Then throughout most of the pandemic, Canada has been one of the laggards in terms of recovering jobs. Our unemployment, of course, has been near the bottom of the G7 throughout most of the pandemic. I would love to share your rosy review of the plan, but the facts don't merit it.
I would like to jump over to Mr. Hamilton and thank him, first of all, for all of his great work.
I'd like to start an inquiry, which I will probably continue in further rounds, about the vetting process.
We understand the pressures of getting the funds out as quickly as possible to employers to support the employees. However, it does seem as though a number of steps were skipped, one of which was in not collecting the social insurance numbers. I'd like to give Mr. Hamilton or any of the other panellists an opportunity to explain why the social insurance numbers were not collected.