Madam Speaker, the hon. minister mentioned that she cannot stress enough the timely passage of this bill. I do hear her on that.
She also mentioned there are labour market conditions her department has been monitoring since September, but likely before that, since the government instituted the CERB and the EI changes. The original bill was to provide that six months or 26 weeks of coverage, which would come to the end of March, as she mentioned.
My question is as follows. We knew the second wave was coming. We knew there would be labour market devastation from the second wave. The minister mentioned she provided this to us at the end of February. Why was it not provided sooner, at the end of January?