Madam Speaker, I recently asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer to calculate the cost or benefit to Canada of a one-year extension to the CEBA loan deadline. I knew there would be a financial cost for the government to carry $40 billion in loans for another year. The PBO said that it would be close to a billion dollars, but I also know that many businesses will go under if they do not get the extension. A recent CFIB survey found that 28% of businesses strongly question whether they could remain in business if they lose the forgivable portion of the CEBA loan. If those businesses go bankrupt, the government could lose over $10 billion in loans it cannot recover. Unfortunately, the PBO told me he could not use the CFIB data and could not find any other data to calculate that loss. However, even if only 10% of businesses go under, we would lose over $4 billion in unpaid loans. More importantly, we would lose tens of thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs across this country.
House of Commons Hansard #258 of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was farmers.
