:
I officially call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 30. It's the first panel of three today of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the order of reference of Tuesday, March 24, the committee is meeting on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today's meeting is taking place by video conference, and the proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. So that you are aware, the website will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.
With that, we will welcome our witnesses. We're privileged to have today the Honourable , Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade. With her are several officials from the Department of Finance and the Department of Industry.
With that, Madam Minister, I'll give you the floor. You have an opening statement, and from there we'll go to questions.
So that everybody knows, so they can think about it in the meantime, the first questioner will be Mr. Cumming followed by Mr. Fraser.
The floor is yours, Madam Minister.
:
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with this committee about some of our government's supports for Canada's small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Small businesses are at the very heart of our communities across the country, and they are truly the backbone of our national economy. They employ 8.3 million hard-working Canadians and account for nearly seven out of every 10 private sector jobs in our country.
Therefore, when this pandemic hit, we knew that we needed to do everything possible to help them here in Canada. We remain steadfast to ensure that these small businesses that are the pillars of our towns, our cities and our neighbourhoods get support during this difficult time.
Mr. Chair, over the past several months my team and I have spoken with thousands upon thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs in every sector and region across Canada. We heard that our response to COVID-19 needs to be flexible and balanced.
It needs to be flexible because the situation we currently face is truly unprecedented, and there really is no template to work from. Circumstances and challenges are still evolving, and at a rapid pace. Our response also needs to be balanced, because we need to meet the needs of all small business owners during these challenging times. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to relief.
Small businesses, because of their size, are often more entrepreneurial, more nimble and very in touch with their customers and communities. This is often the key to their success, but it also makes them vulnerable during turbulent times like the one that we are facing right now in a global pandemic.
When Canadians are asked to stay at home and they’re not able to eat out at their favourite restaurant, go to an appointment at their physiotherapist's or their salon or travel and stay at a hotel or bed and breakfast, there is an impact on those businesses. If you’re an entrepreneur who has invested everything in a community theatre or a pub or a bakery or your technology, you're absolutely feeling the brunt of COVID-19. You have probably had to close your doors, and your sales have probably taken a huge hit. Indeed, for many they've disappeared entirely.
When people are asked to stay at home, they’re likely to also hold off on purchases, so if you’re a business that sells technology, furniture or jewellery, you’ve also taken a hit. Then there are service providers that we normally interact with every day: our dry cleaners, our yoga studios, fitness studios, day cares and hair salons. They’re feeling the effects of having to temporarily close their doors. If you are in a business that moves people or goods, like our taxi drivers or our delivery service workers, your revenue has been impacted too.
The harsh reality is that the majority of our entrepreneurs and small business owners have faced serious challenges, and this happened almost overnight for them.
For a small business to get over the challenges of this pandemic, they’re likely facing at least three major threats: keeping their teams together, keeping their costs low and covering their operating expenses. Our government has taken serious and decisive action to address each of these threats.
Mr. Chair, I grew up in a small business. I know that this is often a family affair. Seventy-five per cent of Canadian small businesses have fewer than 10 employees. You often know each other's birthdays, kids’ names and spouses. From my own experience and through conversations with small business owners, I know that employers often think of their teams as extended family. I also know that in order for a business to remain resilient through this difficulty and recover more quickly after this challenging time, the team must stay together.
That is why one of our most important initiatives is the Canada emergency wage subsidy. Through this subsidy, we are going to keep more Canadians employed by covering 75% of those wages. This will be a key support as we enter the restart phase, and we’re extending the wage subsidy for an extra three months, until the end of August.
We're also helping over 3.2 million businesses and self-employed Canadians to keep their costs low by allowing them to defer GST, HST and customs duty payments. In addition, they can keep more money in their pockets over the next number of weeks and months because we're extending the tax filing deadline and allowing businesses to defer any payments, if they owe any, until August 31, again helping them keep their costs low so that they can have that extra flexibility to manage that cash flow.
To entrepreneurs across the country, we also know that covering your operating costs, like rent and utilities, is an incredible challenge right now, so through the Canada emergency commercial rent assistance, we've partnered with provinces and territories to reduce rent by 75% for businesses experiencing incredible hardships for the months of April, May and June, and starting next Monday, May 25, applications for the Canada emergency commercial rent assistance will be opened.
We know that business owners and landlords can work through those details now through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Those details are already available, and they can start looking at them and be ready for when the application opens next week.
Rent, of course, is not an area of federal responsibility, but the success of businesses, frankly, is the responsibility of all of us, so we're working hard to make sure that this rent assistance support gets out as quickly as possible. We've also introduced a variety of lending supports available through banks and credit unions to help businesses with their cash flow.
One of these is the Canada emergency business account, or CEBA. Many of you know about this. It's a $40,000 interest-free loan with up to $10,000 forgivable if they're able to pay it back by the end of 2022, and to date this support has helped over 621,000 businesses and entrepreneurs across the country who have accessed it. It's helping our favourite restaurant to keep its lights on while also switching some of its operations to delivery service. It's helping that furniture store that relies on foot traffic to stay afloat so that it can keep paying the cost of its warehouse space. It means that the local bed and breakfast is maintaining its property even if its doors are temporarily closed. On Tuesday, just a couple of days ago, we announced that this CEBA loan will now be expanded and available to businesses that don't have a minimum $20,000 payroll.
That means that if you're a sole proprietor or a business that relies on contracts or a family-owned firm that pays its employees in dividends, you're now eligible. You need to have a business bank account, a CRA number under which you're filing your tax returns for 2018-2019, and non-deferrable expenses of between $40,000 and $1.5 million. These are non-deferrable expenses like rent, utilities, insurance, salaries, and that sort of thing.
We've certainly heard from the hair salon owners and stylists who rent chairs, the local chiropractor who has a practice but no employees, the farmer who pays himself in dividends but has to pay machinery costs and animal feed. This loan expansion is going to help not only those businesses but thousands more businesses to access this support.
We know that there's still more to do. For those businesses that operate out of a personal bank account and that are too new and have yet to file a tax return, we're working hard to make sure that we have a solution to help them as well through this challenging time. For larger businesses looking to get support through this difficult time, there are other liquidity supports, other loans that are available of up to $12.5 million, also available through financial institutions like banks and credit unions.
We know that all across the country, across every region, businesses need to be supported. Some are not supported through the programs that I just talked about, and because of that we've devoted almost a billion dollars to rural tourism businesses through the regional relief recovery fund, and we've also created supports to help indigenous-owned businesses, young entrepreneurs, innovative and high-growth firms, women entrepreneurs and many, many more.
Mr. Chair, our government has acted quickly. We've introduced broad measures to help small businesses from coast to coast to coast. These measures will help businesses weather the storm, but we know that the introduction of the measures is really just a first step and that businesses are going to continue to need help and support in order to weather this period and make it into the restart.
That's also why we created the Innovation Canada portal and the Business Canada app. It's so that small businesses can navigate through the many supports that we've introduced. We've also partnered with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to create the Canadian Business Resilience Network so that owners of small businesses can truly get the support they need. It's more than being able to put money out; it's making sure that they also have the support and tools to be able to access the support properly to help them through this time.
I'd like to close by thanking the many small businesses that are providing essential services to our communities through this challenging time. My colleagues and I have heard countless stories of entrepreneurs and communities all across the country going beyond the call of duty and just giving back. I'm so impressed by the resilience of our incredible business owners and what they've done to help each other out through this difficult period. To those hard-working business owners, I want to say thank you.
Mr. Chair, we're all in this together. I appreciate this committee's support for the efforts during this difficult time. As I keep saying everywhere across the country on Zoom calls, just like the one we're having today, we're all here to help our small businesses survive this pandemic and pave the way for our economy to recover. We'll continue doing the hard work together to help save the small businesses of our hard-working Canadians and those jobs across the country.
I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to all of you today. I look forward to taking your questions.
[Translation]
Thank you very much.
:
This truly is unprecedented. You're absolutely right.
We take pride in the way we listen to Canadians in the course of developing policies, programs and funding for the range of supports in the normal course of doing business in government. With the global pandemic, the absolute urgency of getting support out to businesses and Canadians was the focus. We listened to Canadians, literally right from the very beginning, and we continue to listen to those businesses so we can reflect on where there may have been a gap, where something may need to be changed and adapted along the way.
Some of those adaptations also mean making legislative changes. I thank all our colleagues from all sides of the House for coming in and helping us as team Canada to introduce the wage subsidy, as an example. That required legislation for the size of the emergency support package we've had to put out in an effort to support Canadians.
The Canada emergency business account is an example of how we listened to colleagues on this committee and listened to colleagues from all sides who had input and feedback from their own constituents and businesses about what was or wasn't working.
My department, right from the get-go, has a call every single day throughout this entire pandemic. It started with tens of businesses and grew to hundreds of businesses. Now it's over 1,000 businesses, as well as business associations. They talk to my department every single day so we can understand the issues they are facing and the needs they are dealing with. They represent different sectors, so we are making the adaptations, making sure we have invested in their regional development agencies and community futures programs to ensure additional support is there for smaller businesses in rural communities.
We are making sure we are providing support through the industrial research assistance program for those high-growth innovative companies that weren't experiencing the kinds of revenue losses that are calculated by many other companies, but for that sector it is a revenue loss.
I'd like to make a comment before I ask my next question. When the situation has stabilized, I think it will be time to present a budget with an overview of the recovery. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, when he came before this committee, said that it was urgent and absolutely necessary that there be not a budget, but an economic update so that we could take stock of the situation. We have been going through this crisis for several weeks now. Your words at the opening of this meeting testified to that. I am therefore reiterating my request.
I'll now move on to my question. On March 20 of this year, the announced a plan to mobilize industry to fight COVID-19. The goal was to establish an emergency supply chain in response to the crisis. I am talking about the Canadian industrial mobilization plan to address COVID-19.
Apart from a few names of companies that participated, we did not receive any updates on the results of the plan from this committee. Next week we will begin a study on self-sufficiency and supply chains. In this context, this information seems to us to be important, even crucial. So I'm going to ask you a series of quick questions about this plan.
Do you have any idea how much money has been invested in this plan by the various departments?
What was the production capacity for the products targeted by this plan?
Could these companies, under normal circumstances, continue this production and still be financially viable or, in reality, did this plan only involve a single amount of money being disbursed at the beginning?
Finally, what's the extra cost of making these products here instead of somewhere else?
I've asked you a lot of questions, but you can answer them based on what you know. Afterwards, if you or your officials could send your answers to the committee, we would appreciate it.
:
Thank you so much, Mr. Ste-Marie.
It's really remarkable, and I'm so proud to be a Canadian right now, because businesses have stood up to add to the fight against COVID-19 by retooling their shops in order to produce PPE and the necessary equipment and supplies that we need during this period.
Wearing my other hat as the international trade minister, I have been working steadfastly with partners in G7 and G20 countries, like-minded countries, through organizations like the World Trade Organization to ensure that supply chains remain open, particularly around medical supplies and key agricultural products, so that we can get the supplies into our industries and to Canadians. It's really important. Over 5,000 companies have stood up in our made-in-Canada strategy to help us all through this crisis with the production of equipment.
With respect to the restart to the economy, COVID-19 has been experienced differently in different parts of the country, so as expected, you see restarts taking place with a different phasing approach in each of the territories and provinces—probably just slightly differently. The federal government has been working with jurisdictions to make sure that we're taking a coordinated approach so that we are doing this restart carefully, with the health and safety of Canadians at the forefront.
We've asked Canadians, including ourselves, to make enormous sacrifices in the effort to flatten the curve and to help make sure that the health and safety of Canadians is our top priority. A lot of sacrifices have been made, and certainly businesses have been impacted because of this. This restart is going to be done in coordination and collaboration, and we're going to do it while supporting our businesses as they go through this.
With respect to the specifics around mobilization, I don't know if my deputy wants to add to that.
Supreme Court justices raised concerns about the timeliness of trials once courts resume, especially with respect to criminal and civil trials. I second these concerns, along with the expectations being placed upon potential jurors. Extremely resistant and unwilling to respond to a jury summons in the post-pandemic environment, many Canadians will not be equipped to serve on a lengthy trial so soon after the crisis, yet this will be the expectation.
Transitioning out of a period of unemployment, layoffs and tenuous employment, the focus for many Canadians will now be on their jobs and availability for work. Many will be experiencing financial hardships not seen in decades and still have family care commitments that will not have expired. Also worried about their own personal health, they will be fearful of close proximity to others in court and the confinement of jury duty.
The fears of infection will be starkly elevated among our senior citizens, a large proportion of whom sit on juries.
Canadian workplaces will be less willing or sympathetic to support employees during time spent in court, given their own economic fragility and desire to revitalize operations, putting mounting pressure on employees to respect their employers over their summons.
This current crisis will only serve to compound and deepen the foundational concerns for jury duty raised by the Canadian Juries Commission when we first appeared before you on February 6, 2020.
Jury duty is the last mandatory civic duty. Failure to show for a summons is punishable by a fine or imprisonment, yet I fear Canadians will be forced to make terrible choices between safety, duty and fines.
Jurors are an integral component of the court. Judges, legal counsel, court staff, police and first responders are afforded access to new and evolving evidence-based treatments, but the jury is not.
Alarming data has emerged during the pandemic highlighting the significant worsening of Canadians' mental health, raising concern among health care professionals about a looming echo mental health crisis.
The recent announcement by the federal government of significant mental health investments to address this present challenge must be met with similar funding for jury duty. Juror mental health requires a specific intervention through evidence-based assessment and treatment and trauma-informed approaches. This intervention must be given the same priority and made available to all regions of the country. Such is the mandate of the Canadian Juries Commission.
Given the deep concerns for jury duty, the Canadian Juries Commission would like to highlight the services we have in development now, which will provide critical support to the provinces and territories in managing juries, courthouses and support for jurors themselves. Our digital application will be made available to all Canadians free of cost, providing much-needed information about jury duty procedure and mental health solutions, with connections to practitioners and programs. It will be available in both official languages, as well as indigenous languages and others where appropriate.
Our online mental health, first aid and crisis management training for courthouses, court staff and officers managing jurors will be available across the country in order to fulfill a critical need. As Canadians begin to return to work, our jury duty workplace tool kit will assist employers and managers to help support employees as they transition through jury duty. Our much-needed juror peer support network is modelled after successful programs used by first responders, the military and veterans and has peer counsellors on standby awaiting training.
Our evidence-based assessment and clinical treatment programs, in partnership with organizations like CAMH and the Canadian Mental Health Association, will provide trauma-informed supports across the country to jurors following clinical best practices.
Honourable members, these are solutions that are needed now. These are solutions we can implement in time to meet the demand when courthouses reopen in the fall.
We were honoured to be included in this committee's first report among recommendations to the finance ministry to provide $20 million in funding over 10 years to the Canadian Juries Commission to support juror mental health.
The Canadian Juries Commission respectfully asks the members of the Standing Committee on Finance to champion your unanimous recommendation to provide 10 years of stable funding now for the commission, so that as courthouses reopen after the COVID crisis, our programs can meet the needs of Canadians serving on juries.
We hereby also request that jury duty be added to the list of federal essential services to combat COVID-19 as part of Canada's post-COVID recovery efforts. This will send the right message to all Canadians and build confidence in the system.
Thank you for allowing me to appear before you once again today.
The Fish, Food and Allied Workers—Unifor represents 15,000 working women and men throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of our members are employed in the fishing industry and are spread out in more than 500 communities in every region of the province. There are 10,000 employed in fish harvesting and 3,000 in fish processing.
COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on our province's fishing industry. Many fisheries have been delayed by more than a month at what would have been the beginning of valuable crab and lobster seasons, due to safety concerns related to the pandemic. Now that fisheries are up and running in Newfoundland, market challenges are severely impacting incomes.
To put it in context, last year's fishery was worth $1.5 billion to the economy. The snow crab fishery alone was valued at more than $350 million at the dock. Losses related to the pandemic could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, and this is devastating for coastal communities.
Workers continue to be concerned about safety on the job and about how a shortened season will impact their income. Both harvesters and plant workers rely on employment insurance to supplement income during the off-season. For harvesters, these EI benefits are based on earnings, not insurable hours. With most harvesters expecting a significant decline in earnings this year, many were rightly worried about qualifying for benefits once the fishing season ends. They were relieved to hear the federal government's announcement last week of changes to fishing EI so that harvesters can use the previous year's earnings to qualify in 2020, in addition to the new wage subsidy and grant for fishing enterprise owners.
It will be important to ensure that these programs are implemented to achieve their intended goals and that harvesters don't fall through the cracks. Consideration must be given to fishing enterprises that are severely impacted or have no opportunity at all to sell their catch.
Processing workers face similar struggles. Those workers rely on EI benefits and were left out of the recent federal announcement for harvesters. Like harvesters, processing workers are on the front lines, working to provide fresh, high-quality seafood to domestic and international markets, feeding coastal communities and supporting many fishing families.
Given the delays in the season and the market challenges that have limited the amount of seafood we will process and export, many processing workers may see reduced work and income, and thus may not have enough hours to qualify for adequate EI benefits to carry them through until next year. These workers will need support from the government, either by an extension to CERB or through changes to seasonal EI, similar to the recent changes to fishing EI that will ensure they can qualify based on last year.
The inshore fishery is the primary economic driver in a majority of our coastal communities. Jobs in the fishery provide good middle-class incomes in rural communities, which is why support for the industry in the short term is so critical. Protecting and promoting a fishery that serves communities, addresses challenges in food security and provides good wages and safe workplaces must be priorities for all levels of government and all stakeholders in our industry if we want to come out of this pandemic with vibrant and sustainable coastal communities and an economy where no one is left behind.
Thank you.
Many thanks to the committee for the opportunity to present to you today.
I'm joined by my colleague, Dr. Brad Wouters of UHN, who can take part of any detailed questions you may have during the question and answer period.
I would like to start with the general but very important observation regarding all the organizations I represent. Does the Government of Canada consider the research hospital network and its research institutes on an equal footing with the private sector? Our network is a major economic driver and its research brings tremendous value to public health and to Canadians.
The second question that I would put to you is this: Are we really prepared to do some soul-searching and review our practices vis-à-vis a health system that has shown obvious weaknesses, a lack of national coordination, a major financial crisis and depleted human resources?
When Canadians think of health care institutions, they think of life-saving care delivered to those who need it and available when they need it. That is true and it is important. Indeed, it is foundational, but there is another side to Canada's community of health care institutions that is less well understood. Canada's health care institutions are world-class hubs for research, innovation and commercialization in the field of health. Research institutes based in health care are developing answers to the great questions of the day, working at the bleeding edge of disciplines that run the gamut from precision genomics to population health.
Health care institutions across Canada are a major economic force in Canada, employing over 650,000 employees, 8,000 to 10,000 scientists and 60,000 research staff and students. That workforce supplies the raw talent for Canada's $7.8 billion biotech industry and generates untold knock-on economic benefits for Canada.
The federal funding for wage support announced by the government last Friday was met with great relief by the health research community and may have avoided the loss of up to 15,000 jobs in May alone. We are sincerely grateful for the government's consideration and foresight in this matter.
Canada's health care organizations have taken extraordinary steps to provide care to Canadians throughout this pandemic. Steps that have been taken required major investments and incurred unforeseen expenses. The federal government has been highly responsive to Canadian businesses and has not hesitated to take steps to mitigate their significant financial losses.
The health care system—including long-term care and home care—should and must receive equal attention from the Government of Canada. The Canadian hospital system must be given access to contingency assistance programs and what's more, this decision must be viewed as one that will be carried out in the future.
With a projected deficit of $250 billion, what does the future hold for Canada's health care system and all the researchers who support it? We cannot afford to gamble on the future. The health of Canadians deserves more than a debate between governments in a power struggle that too often proves unproductive and ineffective.
With that in mind, Mr. Chair, I would ask the committee to consider the role the federal government should play in striking a better balance across jurisdictions in order to support a health system reeling from the epidemic.
Thank you very much.
It's an honour for Kim and me to address you in the House of Commons finance committee on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We appreciate the opportunity to be back and to see familiar faces despite the circumstances that we find ourselves in.
Thank you for your continued leadership. The quick response by the government has been welcomed. The steps that lie ahead are just as important as those already taken. MNP is the leading national accounting, tax and business consulting firm. As the largest professional services firm headquartered in Canada, we have a unique vantage point from which to see the challenges facing Canadians and Canadian businesses.
In our capacity as trusted advisers to 180,000 private enterprises and small business clients, and 19,000 farms from coast to coast to coast, we have seen first-hand how challenging the last two and a half months have been and the difficult road that still lies ahead of all of us.
Inspired by the concept in disaster recovery of “build back better”, we are here today to discuss tangible measures to kick-start Canada's economic recovery and get people back to work. While build back better is technically referenced in the context of critical infrastructure like bridges and dams, there is little more critical than the economic well-being and confidence of every Canadian.
Every aspect of Canadian life has been impacted by COVID-19. As Canadians begin venturing out from the last 60 days spent under public health orders, everyday actions as simple as turning a doorknob are looked at with suspicion and nervousness. According to a recent poll, over 50% of Canadians find it stressful to even leave the house.
In our submission, we outline an action plan for today and for the future. The first phase includes steps that will tackle the crisis of confidence facing Canadian businesses, while ensuring that Canadians can return to work safely and that the economic environment is one that they can trust and believe in.
Many businesses will have to retrofit their spaces to adapt to the evolving circumstances. As well, families will have to modify their homes to care for aging parents and adapt to working from home. Introducing a refundable tax credit for costs associated with commercial, industrial and residential modifications will help create safer, more efficient building infrastructure and will also stimulate consumer spending.
Families that are already saddled with significant personal debt and the reduction of available jobs have students and their parents wondering whether they can still afford post-secondary studies. We recommend that the annual tuition transfer cap be eliminated, allowing supporting parents to claim full tuition costs. This will increase access to post-secondary studies for cash-strapped families.
As our economy stabilizes, we recommend creating a temporary system modelled after the homebuyers' plan, where Canadians can access some of the funds in their RRSPs like a rainy-day fund without facing immediate and punitive tax consequences.
Governments across Canada acted quickly to help Canadians, and for that we are all grateful. From St. Patrick's Day to May long weekend we saw 300 programs, grants, deferrals, subsidies, loans and other measures announced by the federal, provincial and territorial governments with the express purpose of stabilizing the economy in the face of the public health crisis.
There are still some items to clarify with respect to the Canada emergency wage subsidy program. Take, for example, a flower shop in Ottawa that has decided to purchase a second location in Cornwall. If the Ottawa location had bought the shares of that second location, that business would be eligible for the CEWS and could retain its employees. If instead the Ottawa location decided to buy the assets of the second location, the business would not be eligible for the CEWS program.
It's important to remember that these are emergency programs. They were not designed as long-term economic recovery programs. If done in a gradual way, phasing out current emergency programs such as the CEWS and the Canada emergency response benefit will ensure Canadians can build back a robust and growing economy.
The CEWS phase-out could target businesses that are still under public health orders to remain closed or that were most severely impacted by the pandemic, or decrease the subsidy percentage from 75% over time.
We know businesses with a rainy-day fund were less reliant on the emergency programs and were able to maintain their employees with limited support. The current tax rules penalize small to medium-sized Canadian businesses for maintaining cash and investments over a certain amount. It is imperative that this limit be increased to ensure businesses can weather future challenges.
Last, there has been much written about Canadian debt loads. We are taking on more debt at the household level and across all orders of government. At MNP, we've completed a quarterly consumer debt index. Our March, 2020 study indicated that nearly half of Canadians are concerned about being close to insolvency.
It is our recommendation that future economic recovery programs consider the concerns of impending deferred debt obligations, and incentivize real economic growth and job creation. We need a strong foundation and framework for recovery.
Thank you for your important work.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for inviting us here today.
The Stratford Festival's executive director, Anita Gaffney, is with me today and is also available to answer any questions.
We would both ask that you think of the Stratford Festival as a business, because it's the way we see ourselves. Ours is a $65-million company that sells its product to the world. This product—unparalleled in North America, with featured artists like Colm Feore, Martha Henry, Maggie Smith and Christopher Plummer—has attracted almost 29 million visitors to southwestern Ontario over the past 67 years.
The Stratford Festival attracts a diverse audience. While it comes from around the world, it is significant that 25% come annually from the United States. These are people who return to Stratford, to Canada, year after year, generation after generation, boosting our tourism economy and proving that when you do something of value it has a lasting impact. In the Stratford Festival's case, that impact is $130 million a year in economic activity, verified by the Conference Board of Canada.
The Stratford Festival was founded in 1952 to save the town from economic disaster when it lost its major industry. It worked, and it continues to work. The festival has grown to become the marquee tourism event in the multi-million dollar tourism industry of southwestern Ontario. It's the largest not-for-profit theatre in North America. It presents 700 performances of 15 productions on four stages. It attracts 500,000 people a year. It employs 1,000 people, creates 2,400 more full-time-equivalent jobs and supports hundreds of small businesses in the region. It drives $55 million in taxes to the three levels of government annually, and has the highest level of earned revenues, at 94%, and the lowest level of government support, at 6%, in the not-for-profit performing arts industry.
Not only is the festival a major attraction, it really does operate as a business. It's also good for business. It is a key attractor used for medical and corporate recruitment, and by regional economic development departments.
When I was the dean at Ivey, I touted the festival quite a bit in my efforts to recruit top talent. I know I was certainly not alone in that. I can attest to the fact that the Stratford Festival is extremely fiscally responsible. I say this as a business leader. It pains all of us to be in this position. It is not our usual manner, and one we will not become accustomed to. However, because of this pandemic, a business model that has worked for decades has been turned on its head. Without ticket sales, the festival's unique ability to be 94% self-funding becomes a unique vulnerability, forcing us to turn to government for its very survival.
The festival's survival is vital. It would not simply be a profound cultural blow to lose the festival. Stratford mayor Dan Mathieson has said it would have a catastrophic impact on the community, causing the loss of more than 3,400 jobs and decimating the downtown core. It is essential to save the festival, and we have taken a number of immediate steps to help stabilize the organization.
We have launched a ticket donation campaign. We have reduced overhead expenses. We have instituted a 50% salary reduction for the executive director and artistic director. We have drawn from our endowment. We have accessed the CEWS. We have accessed a $6-million line of credit from our bank, and we have launched a fundraising campaign to support our recovery.
Even with all of these efforts, there is a shortfall of $20 million. We need the help of government to close this gap. We are committed to raising $12 million in private sector donations, and we ask government to contribute $8 million through a combination of a grant and a loan.
With the support of the government, we can continue to generate jobs, economic activity and tax revenues well into the future. In exchange, we promise a tremendous return on investment, both culturally and economically, and $8 million is after all just 15% of the $55 million in taxes we generate annually.
Granting this urgent request will protect 3,400 jobs, stimulate the regional economy by at least $135 million annually and preserve the international prestige of this world-renowned Canadian theatre.
Thank you very much. We look forward to your questions.
:
Hello. Thank you for asking me to speak today.
I've been publisher and CEO of the Globe for the last 21 years. I'm also co-chair of The Canadian Press, so I'm wearing two hats today.
The Globe is privately held by Woodbridge, which is the holding company for the Thomson family. They've owned media since the early days of Roy Thomson in the 1930s. I worked for him and his son Ken in the U.K. when they owned some of the leading titles there. Now the third generation, in the shape of David Thomson as chairman, is in charge.
One common factor across all those decades is that the principle of editorial independence is respected. Our proprietor doesn't dictate what we publish or what causes we support, and the Thomsons have an enduring belief in the value of journalism that makes a difference. They own the Globe because they think it can make a contribution to Canada.
The cornerstone of our business is not advertising, which is a revenue stream that shrinks each year. No, the present and the future of the Globe is founded on readers and users paying for our content. More than 60% of our revenue comes from subscriptions, print and digital, and advertising revenue is now only 33%.
To keep on growing our subscriptions, we invest in editorial talent. The best reporters, columnists, designers and data scientists support that business goal. At a time like this, when expert comment and analysis on the pandemic is in high demand, we rely on the wisdom of journalists like André Picard. We have the best team of health and science writers in the country.
Normally we would put that reporting behind the paywall to drive subscriptions, but at the start of the pandemic crisis we made a decision to open up our paywall. We felt it was important for all Canadians to be able to access that content for free. Our audience doubled in April as a result, and we had our highest-ever traffic levels on our websites. That means we sacrificed revenue, but we built trust with our audience. In the current climate, being able to rely on accurate information is a key priority for many Canadians.
We are one of a small number of publishers around the world that have transitioned successfully to a business model that's based on premium content. The majority of our revenue comes from the 120,000 digital subscribers and the 110,000 print subscribers who currently pay to consume our journalism. Because only a third of our revenue comes from advertising, the consequence is that we did not qualify in March for the government's new wage subsidy scheme. April revenue went down further, and May will be about the same on the advertising front, so it remains to be seen if we become eligible.
In their latest results announced last week, Postmedia stated that they expect to receive $20 million to $22 million in wage subsidy from March 15 through to June 6. Torstar, the second-largest group, expects to collect $18 million in the same period. For many in our industry, this is welcome and substantial assistance from the government.
Let's be clear. The long-term outlook for the Globe and many others has darkened because of the pandemic. Print advertising revenue, once the backbone of newspapers, will go into accelerated decline. Some companies have been reporting a 20% annual drop in print advertising revenue, and that was pre-pandemic. For our new fiscal year starting in September, the Globe is forecasting a drop of 32% year on year in print advertising. That's many millions of dollars of high-margin revenue, and we won't be the biggest victims in Canada.
We have been cutting costs over the last few months to minimize layoffs, and I have suggested schemes to Canadian Heritage like a rebate on our printing costs or a subsidy on the fees that all the leading media companies pay each month to The Canadian Press. The broadcasting industry has received additional support, and I argue that targeted support measures for the news publishing industry are likewise needed to help publishers weather the storm.
The newspaper industry is disappointed by the small amount of money spent so far by the federal government from its $30-million COVID-19 awareness campaign. So far the Globe has received only $81,000 out of that $30 million. By contrast, the Ontario government has spent nearly $1.5 million with The Globe and Mail in the last two months on its health awareness campaign. That was a deal done within 24 hours and implemented immediately.
You are no doubt aware that all of Canada's major publishers signed an open letter earlier this month calling on Ottawa to address the inherent unfairness of the system whereby the global platforms enjoy exemption from sales tax in Canada, while paying nothing for the journalism content that they use. The lack of protection for the copyright of our most valuable asset, our content, is a well-known problem. Tax and trade treaties with Washington are no small barriers to solving these issues, but even in the U.S.A the publishing industry association is asking Congress to enable newspapers to bargain with Google and Facebook on a level playing field.
If you value the contribution that newspapers like The Globe and Mail make to the democratic debate and you want to see them survive the current crisis and be healthy, I suggest it's time you pay urgent attention to these inequities.
Thank you for listening. I'm happy to answer questions later.
My name is Jerry Dias, and I'm here on behalf of Unifor, Canada's largest labour union in the private sector. I appreciate having the opportunity to speak with you today.
Look, we're living in extraordinary times. A public health crisis that has already claimed the lives of 6,000 people in Canada has spiralled into a deep and painful economic slowdown. Millions today are unemployed. Many are afraid to go back to work. Not a day passes that I am not grateful for our front-line workers. I am grateful for those in health and long-term care, in retail and in our transport and logistics industries who are risking their lives for our well-being despite low pay and a continuing lack of needed PPE.
As our country stared down economic catastrophe earlier on, Unifor called on the federal government to act boldly and quickly. Despite some early missteps, the government acted on and adjusted key policy programs appropriately. There have been many, including the Canadian emergency wage subsidy. Federal transfers to incentivize premium pay for low-wage workers also filled a major need. The Canadian emergency response benefit, for instance, picked up the slack for our employment insurance system, which is evidently broken and in desperate need of repair. I am glad the CERB moved money into people's pockets so quickly. It will serve as a case study for better income assistance.
However, the CERB has flaws that need fixing. At the top of that list is for ministers and to allow employer-paid and Service-Canada-registered supplemental unemployment benefits, or SUB, alongside CERB. It is ludicrous that the ministers are denying hundreds of thousands of workers additional income supports, some as much as $500 and $600 per week, that employers are ready, willing and able to pay.
Our union has been beating this drum for workers in major sectors like auto, aerospace, steel, rail, health care and public services, among others. Employers, if you can imagine, are themselves lobbying the government, asking to pay these funds, all to no avail.
Fixing this will cost our public purse precisely nothing, yet the answer has consistently been no. This does not make a stitch of sense. Affected workers are outraged. This committee should be as well. It's a no-brainer. It takes a simple regulatory fix that we proposed more than a month ago.
I'm asking this committee today to get this matter resolved.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to join you today.
COVID-19 has not hit all Canadians equally, whether in terms of health or economic effects. My remarks today will focus on two such forms of inequalities that I think are particularly relevant to the work of this committee: those in information and those in household financial resources. These have mattered during the crisis and they will continue to matter during the economic reopening and eventual rebuilding.
Too many Canadians find government programs confusing, and they are confusing. Online FAQs and call centres are no substitute for personalized information and guidance. I don’t have to tell you, as MPs, how important it is that Canadians have access to local, accessible and accurate help to use government programs. You and your constituency teams have been playing a vital role in connecting people to the help they need, but you can’t do it all—no one network can. We need to build a properly resourced web of non-profit services to answer questions, problem-solve and advocate for clients who can’t do it themselves. As I said to your colleagues at the standing committee on human resources, I would encourage the committee to look at the Citizens Advice bureaus in the United Kingdom or the Financial Empowerment Centers in the United States for ideas of the kinds of networks that could be possible.
One-third of Canadians came into this crisis without enough liquid financial savings to pay for even a poverty-line standard of living, let alone their usual level of consumption, for even a month. A bit of additional liquidity in the form of mortgage and tax deferrals will have helped some, but part of the rebuilding phase is going to have to be rebuilding household finances. I hope members of this committee will work with colleagues to find better tools to help households reduce debt and build emergency savings. Passive tax incentives alone will not work, nor will austerity. In fact, austerity will only further reduce consumer confidence and demand among households with the greatest marginal propensity to consume.
Let me close with some observations on the temporary income support measures as we enter a new transition phase. This committee will have heard from senior officials in government that there is much we can’t do as quickly as we should be able to do, or even at all, because our government IT systems cannot handle rapid changes or fine-grained exceptions to general rules. Many Canadians are going to continue to need income support for the next while because reopening is gradual and is going to be uneven by region, by sector, and frankly, by gender. We have to hope that the emergency wage subsidy will mean that some share of layoffs won’t become permanent. I am concerned by the lower than projected uptake of the subsidy so far, but I am pleased that the government has extended the eligible period for this program. That is the right thing to do. We want to incentivize work but only if that work is safe to do.
The CERB will have to be wound down gradually and adjusted for differences in labour market opportunities. The same challenges of coverage and speed in processing that plagued EI at the start of this crisis have not been magically resolved in the intervening time. When thinking about this next phase of financial support, I worry that we will again be faced with trade-offs between making speedy payments with minimal variations and making payments more slowly but adjusting for individual differences in labour market earnings.
We can, however, try to reconcile speed and variation in individual payments if we trust Canadians and accept declarations and attestations, with strong backstops in file review and recovery of funds, instead of holding payments until records of employment and other traditional forms of third party verification are received. Going forward, investments in systems such as e-payroll or better access to real-time economic and financial data would reduce the reporting burden on Canadians, address fears of fraud and allow public programs to be far more nimble and responsive.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
:
First of all, the government is saying that if you receive a supplemental unemployment benefit, then it's not eligible under CERB. For auto workers, for example, I have 50,000 members who have SUB top-ups in case of unemployment, including workers who work for the federal government.
Let me give you an example. Because of the pandemic, instead of our workers who are laid off going on employment insurance, they went on CERB. Right off the bat, they took a cut of $73 a week. We understand that with the pandemic, people were doing everything they could. But now that they're not eligible for SUB, a production worker, for example, who works for Chrysler in Brampton is out $370 a week over and above the $73. If you're a skilled trades worker, it's $520.
A lot of the employers in the beginning, because there was a lot of uncertainty, paid the SUB top-up. Then, all of a sudden, the government came out on May 8 and said, “Absolutely not. You can't pay SUB.” All of a sudden, you have tens of thousands of workers across the country who were receiving SUB, who are already struggling, and now at the end of the year there's going to be an overpayment created and they're going to have to pay back thousands of dollars. It just doesn't make a stitch of sense.
I can't get a logical argument. The argument is that we don't want employees to get the SUB payments if they're on CERB because that'll be an incentive for employers to lay off workers so that they can go on CERB and then employers will just pay the top-up. It's a crazy argument. It doesn't make any sense at all. At the end of the day, the only people who get screwed here are workers. I have tens of thousands of workers. I have workers who have just gone back to work in the auto industry who are scratching their heads. Their employers are saying to them, “We want to pay.” Employers called me. They've sent letters to the government to say, “We want to pay. What the hell is wrong with you?” The government is saying, “You can't.”
I've never seen a situation in which we're dealing with a pandemic. We have negotiated collective agreements that say employers have to pay the top-up, and the government is saying to the employers, “Don't worry about it. You get a free ride.”
We represent the workers at Marine Atlantic. It's a Crown corporation. In the collective agreement I signed with the federal government, there's an SUB. Hundreds of my members who provide the ferry service from Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Newfoundland are on layoff and they're not receiving the SUB payment that we negotiated with the federal government.
If anybody can make a stitch of sense of this, please tell me, because I can't figure this one out.
:
One of the first things that many provincial governments have done—the Ford government and the Jason Kenney government—was to eliminate a lot of the labour law reforms that were implemented, which included paid sick days. I think they're both probably feeling pretty foolish today for doing that, because there is no question that what we have done by not giving our workers sick leave is that we're forcing them to go to work sick, which is of course making other people sick. I think the pandemic is a perfect example of what happens if in fact we don't have any sort of legislative protection that allows people to take time off when they need to.
The courage pay is something we've been talking about for quite a while. Frankly, I take a look at who the COVID heroes are today, and respectfully, they are a lot of workers who don't get the type of recognition that they deserve. I take a look at our members in the long-term care, retirement and nursing homes and in grocery stores, and at airline workers, truck drivers and transit operators. I can walk through so many workers who make so little. I think about the minimum wage workers in the grocery stores and long-term care facilities, and it's outrageous.
If you look at the crisis in long-term care facilities, you'll see that it has changed significantly ever since they went for a for-profit model. We're finding today, of course, that there are a lot more deaths in long-term care facilities that are for-profit facilities, as opposed to those that are publicly owned.
There is a lot that people should have learned as a result of this pandemic, and it really is about the jobs that are critical and the jobs that are deemed essential. I'm also looking at the manufacturing jobs that don't get the respect they deserve either, because now that we've hit the pandemic, who did the and others rely on to help? It was the GMs, the Fords, the Hiram Walkers, the auto parts companies, and Bombardier in Thunder Bay, because having this manufacturing ability has allowed us to react. It's allowed us to build the personal protective equipment that is needed.
I've already dealt with the SUBPs, Peter. The bottom line is that I don't have a logical answer, but, Wayne, we have now forwarded the letter that we sent to Minister and the , so you will have that ASAP, if not already.
Ultimately, we need to change how we view working-class people and the contribution that they have proven during this pandemic. Long-term care workers ought not to be shuffled into part-time jobs; that's why they work in two or three different homes. They should be given full-time jobs and given the respect they need. In this pandemic, there would have been a lot fewer lives lost in long-term care facilities and with the health care workers, hopefully, if in fact long-term care workers had been given full-time jobs where they could only work in one home and were given proper wages and benefits. I think our seniors deserve a lot better than we have done.
:
Thank you so much, Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses.
In the limited time, I will focus my questions on Dr. Robson.
Thank you so much for being with us today, and, more broadly, for your work to ensure the public has the information they need, in plain language, no less, to access some of the emergency programs that have been rolled out. It's been a terrific resource for my team. Thank you as well for recognizing constituency office workers.
To my staff at home and in Ottawa, you have kept a lot of people fed and housed in the past few months. I want to say thank you for all the work you've done.
One thing that drives me absolutely crazy is the fact that my constituency staff have to do so much case work, when in fact that service should be provided by the public service, or perhaps by some sort of a navigator. Maybe there should be a non-profit-type solution, as you've recommended.
One thing that jumps out at me from the past few weeks when I compare them to the past few years is the simplicity of the design of the CERB in particular. We have a whole group of people who have never had to access social supports before, perhaps because they have a healthy income and don't live in poverty, who have had to click more or less "okay" and receive money in their bank account days later.
Over the past few years, in my constituency office, we have seen thousands upon thousands of people who are living in poverty trying to navigate a complex web of provincial, federal, municipal and community programs and they are scraping by with not quite enough really to live and be healthy, often in rural communities that have no transit.
What lessons can we learn from the simplicity of design or perhaps the policy design of the CERB or other federal programs, perhaps the Canada child tax benefit, that we are going to be able to apply on the back end of this crisis to help eradicate poverty in Canada once and for all?
:
Thank you very much for the question and also for the kind words on the little plain language guide that I put together. I'm glad that it's been of help. Thanks again to you, your constituency office, and indeed to all the constituency staff of all the members of the committee. It really is an unsung but incredibly important service that MPs are providing.
As I said in my testimony, I don't think constituency offices can do it alone. I also take your point that the navigation of some of this information should properly be delivered by government officials themselves. The public servants who are actually the subject matter experts ought to be doing a better job. Certainly, we can do some of that, but I think there is also an important issue with regard to public trust. In terms of some of the populations that you just mentioned, where do they turn and where do they feel they can be served with trust? It's often non-profit organizations that are directly in their community and that offer a range of services. At the end of the day, we're going to need multiple touch points because people enter into programs and have complex lives and they need multiple entry points.
You also raised the issue of the simplicity of CERB. It was made possible only by having a more simple design. The employment insurance system in normal times is used to processing, and capable of processing, approximately five claims per minute. CERB, on the other hand, had to be designed in a way—and successfully was—to be able to process 1,000 claims per minute. We do have these in-built tradeoffs between handling volume and handling tiny nuances and tweaks and changes.
As we go forward, as we think about entering into a transition—and as I said, that transition is happening at different times, according to community, according to sector, and according to gender—to the extent that we can, if we can keep programs as simple as possible, it will make it easier for users to navigate them and makes it more possible for administrators to deliver them quickly and to reach the kinds of volumes that we're going to need to continue to reach for the next several months.
I think that's an important principle. As I said in my remarks, part of reconciling having greater flexibility built into programs and being responsive to individual differences while maintaining simplicity is that we're going to have to continue to trust Canadians, that rather than expecting fraud around every corner.... The C.D. Howe Institute just had a paper out today suggesting that perhaps this is the way to reconcile it, to continue to rely on things like attestations rather than waiting for people to jump through multiple hoops before we give them a dollar of help.
:
Those are great questions.
First of all, let me deal with transit. There are mass layoffs announced in some of the major cities in Canada as a result of COVID-19. As a result of COVID-19, the buses are not fully utilized, obviously, because of social distancing, revenue has dropped dramatically and, in many circumstances, no fares at all are being collected.
What bus drivers are saying, if you can imagine, is that they are driving by bus stops at which there are essential workers who are frequently wearing personal protective equipment and hospital garb.
The simple reality is that the number of riders has dropped, the revenue has dropped significantly and now they've announced layoffs.
You can't say on the one hand that we need essential workers—and transit workers are essential—and then announce major, major layoffs, including right here in the city of Toronto. We can't say they're essential workers and then they get laid off.
The other side of the argument, Peter, is that 75% of all PSWs—all the workers who work in long-term care facilities—take public transit. About 75% to 80% of workers in grocery stores take public transit. At a time when we most need public transit, there are going to be massive layoffs, so the government clearly, clearly needs to step up.
For a perfect example, the transit industry is not eligible for wage subsidies. In fact, if the transit system would at least be eligible for the wage subsidy, that would go a long way in offsetting some of the significant costs.
Phillip laid out the whole issue with the media. Simply put, about 250 local newspapers have closed in the last 10 years. Just in the last few weeks, the National Post announced some major closures in Manitoba. The issue is clearly Google and Facebook. They have had a free ride for years.
Phillip is right. Australia got tough, France got tough and the U.K. is getting tough. Other countries around the world are saying, okay, enough of this. It's got to the point, frankly, where Google and Facebook will steal the information that is paid for and written by The Globe and Mail, The Star or the National Post. They take what is written by other newspapers—conventional media—and they post it but don't pay anything for it. If Google and Facebook lived by the same rules as Phillip Crawley and The Globe and Mail, we'd have a different situation.
They don't pay taxes. They get a complete free ride. There has to be something wrong with the system when we know there's going to be a wholesale wiping out of the industry if we don't do something. You can't have a thriving democracy, which we're very proud of here in Canada, if you don't have a strong media. There's a lot that has to be done.
:
Thank you very much, and thank you for inviting me to appear today.
As you mentioned, I am joined by my colleague, Ben Gully, the assistant superintendent of the regulation sector at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, or OSFI, as it's usually called.
OSFI is Canada's prudential regulator and supervisor. We promote financial stability by keeping a close eye on the solvency, liquidity, safety and soundness of federally regulated financial entities. Our core functions are regulation, which is setting rules and guidelines, and supervision, which is assessing adherence to these rules and making sure institutions close the gaps that we identify. We regulate and supervise about 400 financial institutions, mainly banks, insurance and trust companies, and over 1,200 private pension plans.
[Translation]
OSFI works closely with its federal counterparts, namely the Department of Finance, the Bank of Canada, the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and its provincial counterparts.
It also exchanges information with the international bodies to which it belongs, such as the Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors.
[English]
I do not need to tell you that these are extraordinary times. COVID-19 has caused many tragedies and great disruption, as well as forcing us all to change how we live and work.
In these unprecedented times, Canadians can have confidence in our financial system because it is resilient and well prepared. Our role has always been to think about how to prepare for and how to respond to severe scenarios, whether they affect a single financial institution or the entire financial system.
While much of what is happening now is clearly extraordinary, many of the challenges facing the financial system are elements that OSFI has been preparing for for some time.
In particular, OSFI strengthened its regulation and supervision of financial institutions in the decade that followed the global financial crisis, even though the Canadian financial system had performed well during that period. This included new requirements in areas such as capital adequacy, which is the capacity to absorb significant losses and continue to function; liquidity adequacy, which is the ability to make good on cash outflows as they come due even in stressful financial market conditions; and operational resilience, the ability to function even during a serious disruption.
Not only did OSFI raise minimum capital and liquidity standards, it further required banks and insurers to exceed those standards under normal conditions, thereby building robust buffers for use when necessary.
One of OSFI's most important tools in the current situation is setting capital levels. You may wish to think of capital as a form of self-insurance which provides both a buffer against unforeseen losses and an incentive to manage risk-taking. Strong capital levels allow a financial institution to operate normally even if it experiences losses.
Part of our capital regime is the domestic stability buffer, which requires Canada's biggest banks to set aside additional capital during good times and then allows them to draw it down at a time like this. This positions banks to continue to support the economy during an economic downturn even though they face the prospect of losses on some of their loans.
We reduced the domestic stability buffer by 1.25 percentage points on March 13, which increased the lending capacity of Canada's largest banks by over $300 billion. OSFI will continue to monitor the economic situation and, if conditions warrant, is prepared to release the remaining 1.0 percentage points of the buffer.
As part of that mid-March announcement, OSFI instructed banks to not undertake dividend increases and share buybacks so that the additional capital will be used as intended.
In early April, I issued a further statement on bank capital and dividends to contribute to a broader understanding of the capital regime in Canada and the resilience that is already baked into the system before further actions are required.
[Translation]
While the actions we take in anticipation of an economic downturn are important, we must also respond to the downturn by adapting our supervision of financial institutions and pension plans and by adjusting our guidance and regulatory requirements as circumstances warrant.
[English]
Since the start of the pandemic, OSFI has been closely monitoring the financial condition of banks and insurers, reviewing their responses and maintaining ongoing communication with them.
My colleague, Mr. Gully, will describe the regulatory measures that we have taken recently.
Just before I call on Mr. Gully, let me reiterate that Canadians can be confident that OSFI is acting to meet its mandate of protecting depositors, policyholders, creditors and pension plan beneficiaries in these extraordinary times.
I will stop here so my colleague can deliver his remarks, and then we will be pleased to respond to your questions.
As the superintendent mentioned, one of OSFI's roles is to be prepared for threats to the financial system. Our guidance and expectations for financial institutions and private pension plans under our jurisdiction are aimed at supporting resilience.
OSFI's sustained efforts to review and develop guidelines have resulted in an effective supervisory and regulatory regime that protects depositors, policyholders, creditors, and private pension plan beneficiaries while allowing institutions to take reasonable risks and compete. Extraordinary times have required OSFI to ensure, more than ever, that our guidance is credible, consistent, necessary and fit for purpose in the Canadian context.
OSFI's first COVID-19-related regulatory announcement was on March 13, with the and the Governor of the Bank of Canada. In that announcement, we suspended our planned policy consultations and provided some measured regulatory flexibility on capital and liquidity requirements. We have been in frequent contact with institutions and with our regulatory partners to refocus efforts on the issues at hand.
As the superintendent mentioned, we continue to work with domestic and international partners. Domestic co-operation and collaboration is important, given the independent mandates of each organization and the various measures taken by other parts of government. International co-operation benefits us, as we can learn from actions taken by our peers, share valuable lessons and make decisions that reflect the international context, with the focus on resilience of Canadian institutions. These frequent touchpoints and our ongoing supervisory work with institutions have resulted in a series of announcements and letters to the industry sectors we oversee. These have all been made available on our website. Further, we have offered technical briefings for analysts, industry and pension plan administrators to share information and provide clarity on our expectations.
From these briefings and through communication with industry, we have developed questions and answers on recent COVID-19-related regulatory measures and put them on our website. These are updated regularly as conditions change, and when OSFI takes action. This promotes a consistent understanding of OSFI's expectations across market participants and limits speculation that can occur in the absence of clear information.
While areas of uncertainty remain in how the pandemic will affect financial institutions, the Canadian economy and the daily lives of Canadians, Canadians can have confidence that OSFI is working hard to continue meeting its mandate. OSFI will continue to consider potential regulatory changes during this exceptional period and will make sure that any further adjustments are credible, consistent, necessary and fit for purpose. We will continue to publicly communicate our expectations of institutions and are happy to answer questions that you may have.
Thank you.
:
We are a little over time. I apologize for that.
Mr. Rudin and Mr. Gully, on behalf of the committee I want to sincerely thank you for your presentation, but perhaps even more so, to thank both of you and your team for the work you do to ensure that our financial institutions are secure in this country. That's important to people out there on my street in Hunter River and it's important to the people in downtown Toronto. You have an extremely responsible position and we thank you for the work that you do.
Thank you for appearing before the committee today.
For committee members, I'll just outline the panels we will have next week. We will need lists of witnesses from all parties, preferably at midnight tonight, but we'll go to 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. Maybe the clerk could put out an email on this as well.
Could members give that some thought and get your proposed witness lists in to the clerk as soon as possible so he and his staff can do the work of trying to call those witnesses and get them in place?
On Tuesday, May 26, the first panel is on public transportation; and the second panel is on self-sufficiency and the supply chain. On Thursday, the first panel is on oil and gas; and the second panel will b e the bi-weekly report of the and officials from Finance and other departments.
David, can you put out an email just following the meeting, as well, so people have the topics that we agreed to at the steering committee meeting last week?
I see Peter on there and I know Pierre is listening. If we can arrange it, we should probably try to have a steering committee meeting on Monday.
With that, again, thank you to our witnesses and thank you to all the members. We had a lot of information this afternoon, so I thank everyone for their endurance as well.
Also, thank you to the interpreters and staff.
The meeting is adjourned.