Good morning, Honourable Chair and members. Happy spring, everyone.
My name is Dylan Jones. I'm joining you from Edmonton, which is Treaty 6 territory within the Métis homelands.
I am the president of PacifiCan and the interim president of PrairiesCan. These are the successors to WD, Western Economic Diversification Canada, which delivered the RRRF in the four western provinces.
The RRRF was, as the Auditor General has noted, an urgent relief program that targeted businesses and organizations that did not qualify for other pandemic support programs. It was a backstop program. It launched with almost $1 billion for regions across the country and was recapitalized twice, to a total value of over $2 billion, to deal with unprecedented need.
This was emergency funding to help eligible businesses to pay their bills and pay their employees at a time when their revenues were significantly reduced. The program created certainty for thousands of families and hope for the future. From conception to delivery, the RRRF took less than seven weeks to stand up.
In western Canada, the pandemic arrived just as key sectors of the economy were reeling from depressed energy prices and international trade shocks to our exporters. It wasn't just oil and gas. We had problems in global sales across a broad range of commodities. Businesses were very vulnerable in western Canada at the outset of this. That's why demand for the RRRF in the west exceeded all other regions of the country combined.
WD took swift action to provide more than $700 million to 10,000 businesses and organizations. To give you some examples, we supported individual businesses like Rocky Mountain Flatbread, a family pizza and pasta restaurant with locations in Alberta and B.C. They used RRRF funds to develop a home pizza kit and started growing their own salad sprouts, which they now sell to other restaurants.
As you know, a portion of the funds was set aside for tourism businesses. We were able to help the Tunnels of Moose Jaw to retain staff, renovate and prepare for when the attraction could reopen. The reduced risk of permanent closure kept key employees of this year-round tourist attraction working, but also hopeful. I have to say, I really felt like we were in the hope business throughout this crisis.
I would like to note that in western Canada, many under-represented groups were funded at a rate that was significantly higher than their representation in the western market. Rural RRRF approvals accounted for more than double the percentage of rural small and medium-sized enterprises. Women-owned businesses were approved for RRRF funding at a rate that was one and a half times the percentage of women-owned businesses in the population. On the indigenous front, it was a similar story, with twice the baseline percentage.
Altogether, the RRRF in the west supported over 2,700 women-owned businesses, 349 indigenous-owned businesses, at least 97 official language minority community businesses and at least 74 LGBTQ+ owned businesses.
That's a snapshot of how the program was implemented in the west. The picture looks different in other regions of the country and for good reason. Canada is a big country, and it's not the same everywhere. RDAs designed their rollouts of RRRFs to maximize speed and local accessibility. Given the urgent need to quickly deliver this funding, it made sense to use existing application processes that were already available and with which customers and clients were already familiar.
The Auditor General has made some recommendations that we will act on, such as improving the consistency of measurement reporting. Lessons learned will inform the design of performance measurement strategies for future initiatives of this urgent nature. We appreciate the work of the Auditor General. We're always happy to learn and improve.
I will close by noting that the Auditor General found that the regional relief and recovery fund was successful at providing last-resort assistance to thousands of businesses and organizations affected by COVID. Indeed, the RRRF largely did the job it was designed to do, and it did so under pressing circumstances and quickly. Businesses continued operating, and Canadians kept their jobs in a volatile time.
The people of PacifiCan and PrairiesCan, the public servants who delivered this program, were incredibly thankful and humbled by the opportunity to help others.
Thank you.
Thank you.