Human Resources committee  Thank you very much for the question. It raises a lot of very important issues. The first one I'll tackle is regarding who knows best. I will agree with you, partly, that the employer and the employees together know best. What I will say is that the employer has more tools to a

Human Resources committee  Thank you for your question. The Labour Program is not responsible for pension plans. They fall under the jurisdiction of the provinces, and federal plans are the responsibility of the Department of Finance. Sometimes, in the case of bankruptcy, the Department of Innovation, Sc

Human Resources committee  In the event of bankruptcy, the Labour Program compensates employees who did not receive the wages or severance pay owed. We administer this program, but it does not protect pension funds. It protects workers. Mr. Robertson would be able to give you more information on that prog

Human Resources committee  The Department of Employment and Social Development is not responsible for protecting pension funds. If pension funds are in need of protections, this would be done by other departments.

Human Resources committee  I understand. That's why I'll try to redirect the discussion to the program that we administer, which provides financial support to employees who did not receive their wages or their severance pay after a business declares bankruptcy. If you want more information on that, Mr. Ro

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much for your question. I'll answer it in two parts. First, Lori MacDonald, the chief operating officer for Service Canada is responsible for the management of Service Canada offices. I will, however, answer the question by talking about the resources available t

Human Resources committee  Is this better? I chose the French stream.

Human Resources committee  I think that, like every enterprise, at the beginning people were not totally sure what to do, but what we've found is that our employers have stepped up really quickly to address the risk of COVID-19. As you can imagine, the federally regulated sector involves international tran

Human Resources committee  Thank you, and I hope you can hear me better now. I'll turn to my colleague Gary Robertson in a second, but what I'll say more generally is that on the demand for PPE, the priority has been assigned to health care workers. The public health agencies are working with their provin

Human Resources committee  Let me turn right now to Mr. Robertson to speak about our role in PPE and overseeing that. I'll turn to Gary now.

Human Resources committee  I'll say a few things to give a context. In late 2019 and early 2020, we started hearing of cases in China of COVID-19. We were alerted that something might be going on, and we went back to our plans for different epidemics. As you know, we learned from SARS and H1N1 earlier, a

Human Resources committee  I'm not sure if I'm reflecting the question, but thank you for it. I will have to say that questions around wage subsidies don't pertain to the labour program mandate. The wage subsidy program is something that the Department of Finance worked on, in the same way that assistanc

Human Resources committee  I'm sorry because I again have to point to my colleagues at ESDC, the Department of Finance, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development for the recovery of the economy and the plan for reopening. What I can say is that in our responsibility for protecting the occupational

Human Resources committee  I will refer this question to Gary Robertson, but let me say a few words on this first. As you know, the procurement of PPE is something that has been managed, first, for the health care system by our colleagues in the Department [Technical difficulty--Editor] Service Canada [T

Human Resources committee  The first priority in the procurement of PPE was for the [Technical difficulty--Editor] system.