Carla Qualtrough

[COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters, July 8th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that I thought those challenges were addressed. I will follow up right after this committee.

[COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters, July 8th, 2020]

Madam Chair, I can assure everyone in this House that the eight-week extension of CERB is absolutely reorienting toward incentivizing work, requiring people to look for and find work if they can. However, the reality is that people still need support and we are going to be there for them.

[COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters, July 8th, 2020]

Madam Chair, I can assure everyone in this House that we are going after people who prey on the vulnerable, not the vulnerable, and I do not make any apologies for that.

I can also assure everyone that I have worked extremely hard to get provinces to understand the importance of not clawing back the CERB in these times. People have earned money; they are no longer earning money, and they deserve the income replacement. Some provinces have chosen to take that up and not claw back the CERB; others have not, and I continue to put both private, personal pressure but also public pressure on those provinces. It is unfair to people with disabilities that their supports are being clawed back, and I continue to advocate for that not to happen.

[Business of Supply, June 17th, 2020]

Madam Chair, as I have said previously, in the upcoming days we are going to open up the I Want to Help Platform, which will give students the opportunity to be paired with summer service opportunities. We wanted to make sure that we did not burden non-profits. Obviously, in this time of the COVID pandemic their resources are stretched. We wanted to make sure that we had a strong support network for non-profits and students so that—

[Business of Supply, June 17th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, the $60 billion represents an estimated $15 billion for each four-week period. We know that as of June 4, for about two and a half months or two and a half four-week periods, we were at $44 billion. As people transition off the CERB to the wage subsidy, we anticipate the cost of the CERB to go down for two more four-week periods. It is difficult to tell right now, because we do not know how many more jobs there will be, but I assure the House that we will give that information in real time as we—

[Business of Supply, June 17th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, when we asked Canadians to do something really tough in March and we asked many of them to stop working and stay home, which was in our collective best interest, we also knew that we had to support them in their efforts. We did this by the creation of the Canada emergency response benefit, partially because we knew that our employment insurance system would not be able to do what we needed to do very quickly and for the number of people who needed our support.

Very quickly, over the span of a week, we announced the benefit, legislated the benefit and delivered it two weeks later, which is quite extraordinary. Eight million people have now accessed the CERB. We have spent about $44 billion on the CERB to date. Many people who are on the CERB are still working because of the ability to earn $1,000 and be on the CERB. As I said, 1.2 million people have transitioned off the CERB. Many workers, 2.6 million, are now on the Canada emergency wage subsidy. Right now, we are figuring out how many of those were receiving the CERB. That will be an exciting number to share when we have that information.

We know times are tough; we knew that times would be tough, and we tried to make sure we made times a little easier for Canadians in these extraordinary times.

[Business of Supply, June 17th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, we know how hard this summer has been on students and how hard it will continue to be. We heard very clearly from student organizations and from students across the country that they want direct income support, but they also want opportunities to work and opportunities to serve in their communities. This is why our $9-billion package was a complete, comprehensive attempt to address all the needs of students for this summer.

In addition, we added flexibilities to the Canada summer jobs program that will allow students to work part time, allow students to work through February of 2021, allow employers to reorient the jobs they had planned to provide toward essential services and allow us to onboard new employers in this time of crisis.

As a result, we have maxed out the Canada summer jobs program, with over 300,000 students on the Canada emergency student benefit, positive stories of students giving back in their communities and many more students with the opportunity ahead of them to go back to school or continue their studies in September.

[Business of Supply, June 17th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to thank the public servants at CRA and ESDC for delivering for Canadians. There is no better success story in this time of crisis than these groups of people working tirelessly under difficult conditions to deliver this for Canadians.

We extended the CERB yesterday, as was said, because, despite the fact that we saw some positive job numbers last month, the reality is there are many, many Canadians who remain unemployed, who do not have child care this summer and who may still be sick or taking care of someone who is sick, and they need our ongoing support. That is why we are doing this.

I can assure members that by responding the way we are with a changed attestation, we are trying to do our very best to not disincentivize work. The message for all Canadians is that we know they want to work, we know they are having trouble finding work and we are here for them.

[Business of Supply, June 17th, 2020]

Madam Chair, it is an honour to rise in the House today to speak to the government's supplementary estimates and highlight some of the important programs we have funded to support Canadians in these challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Parliament has already approved the purpose of the statutory expenditures, and the terms and conditions under which they may be made, through other legislation. Therefore, the changes to statutory items are presented in the supplementary estimates for information purposes only. These priorities are supported by the appropriations requested in my department's main estimates for the years 2020-21. The majority of these adjustments in the supplementary estimates are for COVID measures, students, youth and seniors.

I want to start by going back to March 2020, when the Canadian economy shut down practically overnight. It quickly became clear that our normal safety net would not support the number of people losing their jobs. Canadians needed their government to act quickly, and that is what we did. We passed the Canada Emergency Response Benefit Act and created the Canada emergency response benefit.

For eligible workers, the CERB has been providing temporary income support of $500 a week for up to 16 weeks. To give members a sense of the scope of the need, more than 8 million workers have been paid more than $40 billion in benefits.

Then, as May turned to June, we knew we needed to make adjustments to the program. We knew that many people's benefits would soon be coming to an end. We were also aware that the economy was beginning to reopen slowly and unevenly across the country. We knew that approximately 1.2 million Canadians who had been getting financial help through the CERB no longer needed it.

Because we know that many Canadians still need help, yesterday we announced the extension of the Canada emergency response benefit. We extended it by eight weeks at the current rate of $500 per week. We know this will go a long way for Canadians who simply do not have a job to return to and for workplaces and industries that have not yet reopened. Extending the CERB will give workers greater confidence that they will continue to get the support they need as they face ongoing disruptions to their work and home situations due to COVID-19.

The CERB will continue to be available from March 15 to October 3. In that time period, workers will now have 24 weeks of the CERB available to them.

While the CERB has been helping millions of Canadian workers get through this difficult time, we know that this benefit is not a long-term solution.

We are transitioning from a phase of the pandemic in which everyone was asked to stay at home to a phase in which workers are returning to work when it is safe and possible for them to do so.

We want to ensure that our programs continue to support Canadians and our economy. That is why we will continue to monitor the situation and ensure that we are able to adapt our existing systems to support Canadian workers as more and more people continue to return to the labour market.

We know that Canadians are ready and eager to do their part. We expect that workers will be seeking work opportunities or returning to work when their employers reach out to them, provided they are able and it is reasonable to do so. We encourage Canadians to consult the Job Bank, Canada's national employment service that offers tools to help Canadians with job searches. These additional weeks will ensure that Canadians have the support they need as they transition back to work.

I will turn now to students and youth.

In April, we recognized that students and youth were facing unique challenges and that many were not eligible for the CERB. That is why we announced, on April 22, comprehensive support for post-secondary students and recent grads. We passed legislation, on April 29, that enabled the four-month Canada emergency student benefit. Students who are not receiving the CERB are eligible to receive $1,250 per month between May and August. Students with disabilities and students with dependants would be eligible to receive an additional $750 per month. We expect the Canada emergency student benefit to cost $5.25 billion.

We also heard very clearly from students that they want to work and they want to serve in their communities in this time of crisis. That is why our measures did not end with the CESB. We announced the creation of thousands of additional jobs and training opportunities, including jobs in the agricultural and processing sectors, through mechanisms like our youth employment and skills strategy and the Canada summer jobs program. The additional funding required for the Canada summer jobs program is $155.4 million.

The jobs funded through the Canada summer jobs program are especially important for young people who face obstacles and those who are looking for their first work experience. These jobs give young people the opportunity to gain the skills, knowledge and experience they need to enter the workforce.

This additional $155.4 million will allow employers to hire approximately 70,000 young people in quality jobs.

We also know that seniors are the most vulnerable to COVID-19. The current situation brings terrible economic stress and anxiety to seniors. That is why our government has introduced measures to help protect their financial security during these uncertain times, measures for which we require additional funding.

First, seniors who have stopped working because of COVID are eligible for the CERB. They can collect the CERB even if they receive the Canada pension plan, old age security or the guaranteed income supplement, without interruption to these benefits. To help seniors cover increased costs caused by COVID-19, seniors eligible for the OAS will receive a one-time, tax-free payment of $300, with an additional $200 for seniors eligible for the GIS. About 6.7 million seniors are eligible for the OAS and will benefit from this one-time payment.

ESDC is requesting $37.2 million in funding for 2020-21 to support ongoing work related to processing demographically driven OAS workload increases.

This funding would also help support organizations that are proposing community-based projects to combat isolation, improve seniors' quality of life, and help seniors maintain a social support network.

The federal government will expand the new horizons for seniors program, with an additional investment of $20 million to support organizations that offer community-based projects that provide the opportunity to further help seniors during this pandemic. It will also provide $9 million for local organizations through United Way Centraide Canada and invest $350 million in a new emergency community support fund that will help all vulnerable Canadians, including seniors in need.

These combined measures to help Canadians, students, youth and seniors get through COVID-19 have been and still are necessary to support Canadians during this crisis, and have helped stabilize the economy.

I am now ready to take questions.

[Business of Supply, June 17th, 2020]

Madam Chair, we have to understand that in this pandemic we have made major announcements that will be reflected in supplementary estimates, as we deliver these programs over the coming weeks and months.

Members will have better, stronger data at that point.