Mr. Speaker, when we asked Canadians to do something really tough in March and we asked many of them to stop working and stay home, which was in our collective best interest, we also knew that we had to support them in their efforts. We did this by the creation of the Canada emergency response benefit, partially because we knew that our employment insurance system would not be able to do what we needed to do very quickly and for the number of people who needed our support.
Very quickly, over the span of a week, we announced the benefit, legislated the benefit and delivered it two weeks later, which is quite extraordinary. Eight million people have now accessed the CERB. We have spent about $44 billion on the CERB to date. Many people who are on the CERB are still working because of the ability to earn $1,000 and be on the CERB. As I said, 1.2 million people have transitioned off the CERB. Many workers, 2.6 million, are now on the Canada emergency wage subsidy. Right now, we are figuring out how many of those were receiving the CERB. That will be an exciting number to share when we have that information.
We know times are tough; we knew that times would be tough, and we tried to make sure we made times a little easier for Canadians in these extraordinary times.