Declaration of Emergency committee  They do not, under the invocation of the emergency orders, no.

Declaration of Emergency committee  No.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Go ahead, Angelina. I can go after you if that's okay.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, as well, members of the committee, for the invitation to speak with you today. My name is Michael Hatch, and I'm a vice-president with the Canadian Credit Union Association. I worked very closely with the Department of Finance in the days in February that are now the subject of this committee's work.

Finance committee  Thank you.

Finance committee  Yes. Thank you. Very briefly, some of those technical questions with regard to joint accounts and other types of accounts were raised in the briefing session on the Friday with Finance. They did a good job of answering them. While answers were not provided in writing, they were provided verbally.

Finance committee  Yes. It's difficult to go back and recall the minute by minute and the day by day in the heat of the crisis. The minister's office ultimately made it clear that credit unions were to be captured by the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the financial sector measures contained therein.

Finance committee  No, it bears repeating that in any such future situation, whenever the federal government has to pull the levers of the financial sector to accomplish its policy objectives—be it for the Emergencies Act or for the Canada emergency business account, the CEBA program, from the early days of the pandemic—that it think beyond six institutions and that it consult all members of the financial sector on an equal footing.

Finance committee  I can take that as well.

Finance committee  Thank you. I had the pleasure of moderating that discussion, and you're absolutely right—it's impossible to manage hundreds of questions in an hour. However, it became clear pretty quickly that most of the questions were under four or five broad categories, so we did our best to address as many of them as possible with our colleagues at Finance, who did a fantastic job on very short notice, and we're very appreciative of those efforts.

Finance committee  That's right.

Finance committee  It will be, yes. Based on the announcement and the assurances that we received this morning from Finance Canada and EDC, yes, all credit unions will be able to deliver CEBA to their members.

Finance committee  Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. This is Michael Hatch from CCUA.

Finance committee  If I may, the exclusion, prior to this event, of any credit unions in Alberta was merely a function of the fact that no Alberta credit unions happened to previously get on EDC's approved list of lenders. There were, as was mentioned, 11 credit unions on that list prior to this because, for whatever reason, in the past those credit unions chose to transact with EDC in one form or another.