Madam Speaker, I heard my esteemed colleague ask a number of questions, and I assume he wants me to repeat what he said, preferably in French. That might be a bit of wishful thinking on his part.
Yes, some of the measures were quite relevant. Then again, not everything could be described as well balanced in the original version, what with the government offering both the wage subsidy and the Canada emergency response benefit, or CERB.
The reason the wage subsidy was such a dismal failure initially is that the CERB did not include any incentive to go back to work. That kept thousands, if not tens or even hundreds of thousands, of people out of the labour market.
Some employers preferred to have their employees apply for the CERB rather than use the wage subsidy. There is still time to improve this and save the Canadian government a few billion dollars.