Finance committee  Indeed an adjustment has been made to the attestation to clarify that the constraint is put in place for federal elected representatives only. For others, there is no such constraint anymore. I think if that's not in place yet in terms of the online attestation forms that applicants are seeing, it will be very soon because we just went out to financial institutions with that adjustment.

Finance committee  As the parliamentary secretary noted, it is certainly an area that we're hearing about. As he also indicated, we have criteria in place. I can't really speak specifically to how we would go about modifying those to bring in start-ups. It's the kind of conjecture that I can't speak to.

Finance committee  Looking at the small business statistics that are produced by ISED, there are around 1.2 million businesses, if my memory serves me correctly, with employment between one and 99. We think that just over a million businesses have access to the program, based on the current thresholds.

Finance committee  I have a two-part answer. The first is that the minister I think was pretty clear that he wasn't ready at this point in time to communicate beyond what had been communicated, so I don't know that we can provide precision beyond what you've heard from him. Having said that, I would just point your constituents towards the availability of other credit measures, including the Canada emergency business account as well as the credit that is available from EDC and BDC, because all of those things are there to deal with the non-deferrable expenses that businesses have, and that includes rent.

Finance committee  I can take that question. What I can tell you is that EDC has a list of financial institutions that are participating in delivering the CEBA. Today there are 43 institutions on that list. That list is growing every day.

Finance committee  Let me speculate. There's a list on the EDC website that has to do with its export guarantee program. That isn't the same list as the list of eligible institutions for the CEBA. With respect to CEBA, there's a list. For example, just from Alberta, Servus would be on that list. Connect First would be on that list.

Finance committee  What I would say in response is that it would add complexity to the process, when simplicity, really, was one of the primary factors that allowed us to move quickly. It would cause us to have to introduce other tests procedurally. Right now, we are what we are, having opened a program that is making credit available to something in excess of a million small businesses in Canada because we were able to do things in a simple and streamlined way.

Finance committee  Thank you. We have some preliminary information from the financial institutions. I just want to put in parentheses here that this program was launched last Thursday. We are now at day five, I suppose, in terms of the program window being open. We've had conversations with the financial institutions about what they're seeing in this regard.

Finance committee  Again, this is a program that's run through the financial institutions at the front end. From our conversations with those institutions today, I think what we're hearing is that they will communicate broadly to their business clients, so there will be no shortage of information, including outreach from the banks and other financial institutions, that this is available so that those who perhaps had taken a first look at it and found themselves not eligible will be able to go in and reapply.

Finance committee  I'm going to make a couple of comments. They're maybe not going to answer your question directly, but they will give you a bit of context. First, the purpose of the CEBA program is to meet non-deferrable costs that a small business might have. It fits into a scheme of other programs the government has available, including the other credit programs offered by BDC and EDC.

Finance committee  Thanks, Suzy. I would maybe just point out that the Bank of Canada now has facilities in place that serve the purpose of supporting funding markets for provinces. It would appear that those facilities are in fact doing a very good job in that regard. What I believe we're seeing is that the spreads that provinces are looking at in funding markets are actually pretty reasonable at the moment, and they've come down quite considerably.

Finance committee  The programs I would point to would be the loan guarantee from Export Development Canada and the BCAP co-lend facility from the Business Development Bank of Canada. Each of those facilities provides pretty much 80% coverage on credit that a financial institution would extend to an operation such as that one.

Finance committee  This is Soren Halverson from Finance Canada. Thanks for the question. Let me start by saying we've worked closely with credit unions over the past couple of weeks as we've been shaping up the business credit availability programs. We also are working with other financial institutions located in Alberta.

Finance committee  I would just add to what Andrew Marsland said, that there are some broadly based programs that support businesses, which have been announced under the business credit availability program. They include the Canada emergency business account, in addition to loan guarantees and lending programs from Export Development Canada and the Business Development Bank of Canada.

Finance committee  Yes, it’s part of our department’s mandate, but it’s also done in coordination with other federal agencies, including the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.