The child care benefit has certainly had a positive impact on families and family life.
What we've been asking during COVID.... In the early days of COVID, one of the highest levels of stress and anxiety was related to financial stress. People were worried they weren't going to have adequate income. That was their number one stress.
Once the CERB, the CCB and the supplementary benefits started to roll out, the financial anxiety started to decrease and other anxieties started to increase because of isolation. As somebody mentioned earlier, there was a need for respite, breaks and rest.
One of the things we have been documenting very clearly over the last several months is that people are running full out, non-stop. There are no breaks. There is no rest. There are no weekends. People are working. If you're working outside the home in the service sector or the health care sector, your hours have gone up; the demands on you have gone up and your number of shifts has gone up. If you're working from home, you are working well into the night and over weekends.
We really need to understand how significant financial assistance is in tempering the anxiety that people are feeling. This is the CERB, the CCB and some of the EI benefits that Andrea mentioned, with the extension of some of the available caregiver relief benefits that are targeted specifically to either veteran families or low-income families. Financial security makes a huge difference.