Madam Speaker, throughout this pandemic the government has been very clear: Workers who lost their income due to COVID-19 were going to receive support, the Prime Minister assured us. Again and again, in statement after statement, the Prime Minister told Canadians “We're here for you.” Those were the words that meant everything to Canadians who did not know how they were going to pay the bills and put food on the table.
Today, however, those words ring hollow for hundreds of thousands of Canadians and their families, people who put their faith in this government and believed that the Prime Minister had their backs, only to discover that it was not true.
More than 400,000 Canadians who applied for the CERB in good faith, who were told by the government that they were eligible and who were in fact eligible according to the CRA website, who received CERB in order to survive, have now received a letter from the CRA informing them that they have to pay that support back. Why? It is because their government changed the rules on them. It is not just wrong: It is a betrayal. It is a betrayal of the House and a betrayal of Canadians.
We spent a lot of time working together in a committee of the whole to get Canadians the help they needed to get through the pandemic. The NDP pushed the government at every turn to do better, and often the government listened to us. We recognized that provinces and territories had to implement strict public health measures to combat the transmission of the virus. We knew that these measures would cost people their jobs. We knew that if we did not act, our economy would be devastated and lives would be ruined. I and my fellow New Democrats called immediately and repeatedly for help for those who needed it, and the government listened and made that critical promise to Canadians that help would be coming.
When the government finally brought the CERB forward for a vote, the legislation, Bill C-13, defined those who would be eligible for support as “...a person who...for 2019 or in the 12-month period preceding the day on which they make an application under section 5, has a total income of at least $5,000”, and the CRA website listed the eligible sources of income to include income from self-employment. That is the bill that I and other members of the House voted for, but that is not what self-employed Canadians are getting from this government.
Canadians should be able to trust their government, and if they follow the rules, so should their government.
The CERB was a lifeline for millions of Canadians. It was a way to make it to the next month, and the next and the next. It is the difference between paying rent and becoming homeless and the difference between hanging on and bankruptcy. Now the government has taken that lifeline away from hundreds of thousands of self-employed Canadians. Worse yet, it is throwing them back overboard.
It is inhumane and, quite honestly, ridiculous, and it does not have to be this way. The government can decide right now to reverse this inane decision. Just apply the legislation the way it was written, which means allowing self-employed Canadians to use total income rather than net income to determine CERB eligibility. It means counting income from grants to artists and performers the same way it is counted for tax purposes.
Will this government restore Canadians' trust and reverse this disastrous CERB clawback?