Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was kind of you to point that out.
I will be sharing my time with the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge today after my speech.
It has been two years now, and I still remember on March 13 getting ready to board a plane to return home on a Friday afternoon on Friday the 13th. It has been two years now, and we have been through a lot as a country and as a world. It was a global issue, but from day one the focus of our government has been on supporting the health and security of Canadians. The second objective, of course, was to help them financially through many of the challenges they faced.
I have to be honest. When we were faced with a global challenge and trying as a government to put programs together to meet the needs of Canadians, with everybody in this game and all members of Parliament from all parties needing to be engaged because we needed to make sure we were supporting Canadians quickly, doing that while we were moving forward at 150 miles per hour was very difficult. I remember spending 67 consecutive nights talking with colleagues in our party and with ministers and the Prime Minister about the various programs that would be needed, because we were getting information about what would be needed from our constituents, the people on the ground who were facing the challenges.
There were three million jobs lost overnight. What did we do to help them? Canadians have been there with us, paying taxes for years, and they were in need. We were in a much better position as a government to help them financially rather than to ask them to be burdened by that expense, which would be tremendous. I remember each day getting more information from our constituents, and then in the nighttime talking to members and colleagues and saying that some things were not going to work for a company and that some things were just not going to work for an individual. We put our heads together to find solutions and tweaked the various programs to meet the needs of the people on the ground.
That is tremendous, in my opinion. That is why I came into politics. It was to help and support people and Canadians, and we were doing that every single day, seven days a week. That, in my opinion, is very important. That is why I want to thank all Canadians, but I also want to thank the individual frontline workers, because most people were scared to leave their homes, yet those workers were going to work every day. I cannot thank them enough, nor our teachers. We have seen our school systems right across the country stay open and continue to ensure solid education for all students, which is crucial.
I have to thank the businesses, because we were quickly in need of PPE, gowns, gloves and whatnot. Our companies right across the country, from all provinces and all ridings, were able to find ways to support Canadians, and that was extremely important. Then it was a question of making sure we could find vaccines, and it is a very tough challenge to be able to get that done very quickly. Again I want to thank our researchers and the health organizations. All countries were working together to help and to meet those needs, and we were ahead of everybody in the G7 in getting vaccinations. Today, as we speak, over 90% of Canadians have had at least one dose.
What types of programs did we use to help Canadians? We had the CERB for people, which guaranteed $500 a week for up to four months to help them. We had the wage subsidy, because we wanted people to stay at work if at all possible. We knew companies were struggling and could not keep people at work, but instead of keeping them at home, we could keep them at work, so we offered the wage subsidy at 90%, which was extremely important. Then we moved forward all kinds of recovery benefits as well. Those are some of the programs we put together to allow Canadians to pull through this pandemic.
I will have the opportunity to go into more detail on how our government invested in various funding. I can tell members right now that we have spent over $72 billion in supporting Canadians through the pandemic, and we will continue.