Mr. Speaker, I feel as though we are on one of those nightly conference calls we had every night of the week, seven days a week, in the first two and a half months of the pandemic, given what was happening in our communities.
The member mentioned by name the businesses he has been advocating for. We all had a list in our communities. I was also working with the downtown business association in Guelph to try to get direct support.
Going through the province was difficult. As the member said, the coordination with the province would be eliminated by this new program, and it would introduce a scaled approach. That was another thing we were advocating for internally: How can we do this for businesses that do not quite meet the thresholds?
Could the member comment on how this is going to improve as business volumes go down or up during the pandemic? Will this be able to match the needs of businesses?