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Pascale St-Onge
View Pascale St-Onge Profile
Pascale St-Onge
2020-11-23 11:07
Thank you.
Tens of thousands of people work on contract or freelance and do not have access to the Canadian social safety net because of their status as self-employed workers. They therefore must not be let down, as both the cultural and media communities would suffer considerably. It is urgent.
Our organizations want to work with governments and partners on long-term structural solutions, because the crisis has highlighted the need to rethink some aspects of our social safety net, such as a complete overhaul of the EI system and the creation of meaningful comprehensive and structuring assistance plans for the sector. As you know, in Quebec, venues will be closed until January 11. So it will soon be 10 months without work.
Our sector is among those in culture and communications that are not experiencing as strong a recovery as other sectors, and the people we represent find themselves in an extremely precarious situation. We were very enthusiastic about the announcement of the Canada recovery benefit (CRB) but some problems remain. The CRB is valid for 26 weeks.
One problem is that there is no mechanism in place to phase out the CRB. This means that contract workers receive either all or none of the CRB. The criterion of 50%  income reduction on average weekly earnings makes it very difficult for many self-employed individuals with an average annual income of about $14,000 to access the CRB. If they earn more than $138 per week, they have no access to the CRB at all, which is extremely problematic.
In addition, there are many administrative delays, and responses to applications are slow. There is a great deal of concern about the files still under review. We are working in a significantly shaken sector, and the people we represent are experiencing a lot of anxiety because of this situation.
I will let my colleague take over.
View Tim Louis Profile
Lib. (ON)
I appreciate that.
In my time remaining, I did want to say that I've hosted a lot of round tables—as a number of people here have done—with artists here in Kitchener-Conestoga, from larger organizations to small independent artists. In typical artist fashion, even though they're struggling, they're always thinking of others. Something that came up a lot in our round tables was our youth and particularly their mental health, and also how we can keep our youth transitioning into arts and possibly work on sustainable careers when times are tough.
It's basic, but can you explain the importance of the wage subsidy and CERB, now the CRB, and how that can support our artists financially so they can help that next generation to become artists and also support them in the mental health thing? Arts are so important to our young artists.
View Steven Guilbeault Profile
Lib. (QC)
I think when history books are written about how Canada responded to COVID-19, they will talk about CERB, and they will talk about how, if you look at our G7 partners, Canada has been, if not the most generous country...to support Canadians, not just artists, but certainly artists.... If you put together all of the measures that we've taken, either directly or indirectly, for the arts and culture sector, the effort by the Canadian federal government has been above $4 billion of support for the sector—and counting, because we are announcing new measures.
I was talking earlier about the fact that we supported the ecosystem, but we also wanted to support people, and that's what we did with CERB and with the wage subsidy, to ensure that those who want to stay in the sector can do that and are supported in these difficult times.
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