Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to ask that you grant leave for an emergency debate on a program, which I think is fair to say has become the signature program of this Parliament, the Canadian emergency response benefit, as well as its successor, the Canada recovery benefit. There is most definitely a sense of urgency around this issue. The program has been a cornerstone of Canada's pandemic response, and it seems the terms and conditions have suddenly changed retroactively for many Canadians who applied in good faith.
With your indulgence, I would like to take a few moments to explain the importance of the issue. I will then proceed to why I think it is important that Parliament deal with this matter on an urgent basis.
It will come as no surprise to many members of the House that at the beginning of the pandemic the NDP advocated for a universal basic income approach. We advocated for a payment to be made everybody, which could then be recuperated from those who were found not to have needed that income at the end of the tax year. We did this because we knew any other approach would lead to a lot of cracks in the system and the people who really needed help would not get it.
As a compromise, the Liberal government moved from its original position of tinkering with EI to something more substantive, and out of that CERB was born. However, the decision to exclude people meant, inevitably, that a lot of people who really did need help were unable to get it. Many times we had assurances from the government, and the House by way of a motion that passed unanimously, that people who were in real need and applied in good faith would not be persecuted later for it.
We still see cracks in the system. There are cracks for people on maternity leave or workers' compensation. What was recently reported is that artists, the self-employed and small business people, who thought their CERB application was being assessed on their gross income, have found out just this month that all along the government imagined it would be calculated based on their net income.
We know there are a lot of small businesses that have suffered serious losses. We know self-employment is often precarious at the best of times and people needed financial assistance right away during the pandemic. They were encouraged to apply if they needed the help. There are members of the government who told them that if they needed it to apply and they would not be turned away. People did that, and they are now finding out that they may well have to pay back amounts between $14,000 and $16,000 by December 31. However, the government is not asking for the repayment of massive amounts of money paid under the wage subsidy to companies that went on to ship it out in dividends to their shareholders.
We need an emergency debate on this because there is a December 31 deadline looming for these large repayments, which people had no idea the Canada Revenue Agency was going to come after them for. It was reported by the CBC on Saturday, December 5. The last opposition supply day was that Monday, which did not leave a lot of turnaround time. Only one party had a supply day very shortly after this came to light, which means Parliament has not really had an opportunity to talk about this.
Given the House of Commons took a very strong position on the issue of CERB repayments, and the government seems to have changed its policy direction, I think it is important that Parliament be given the opportunity to pronounce on that change in direction.
If we do not have this debate now, with the House set to rise tomorrow and not coming back until the end of January, it will be a very long time before members have an opportunity to get this matter back before the House, and for the government to get some direction from Parliament on this. The way the government is behaving is not consistent with the unanimous consent motion passed in the House of Commons.
Therefore, because it could potentially affect a lot of the almost nine million Canadians who availed themselves of the help that was available through the CERB at some point during the pandemic, and because there is a deadline of December 31, I think there is a great need for this emergency debate on the part of Canadians. It is something that I think the House absolutely needs to take up today.