Mr.Ste-Marie, you have the floor.
Mr.Chair, I will continue on the subject of supplementary unemployment benefits. Let me remind everyone that Service Canada has entered into agreements with companies and is not honouring them. The victims are thousands and thousands of workers who have to reimburse the Canada emergency response benefit, as my colleague just explained. I also have the question my colleague from Drummond asked: why is the government not doing the same thing it does with employment insurance and not counting the benefits paid out as part of earned income? It is simple.
Mr. Chair, as legislated, we needed to set up a straightforward, simple benefit to deliver to as many people as possible. The nuance and sophistication of the EI system was not available to us. As a result, as I said, eight million Canadians are getting the CERB. Service Canada is working with each and every employee who is in a repayment situation. We do not want to put anybody in a more difficult situation.
Mr.Chair, the truth is that the government has forgotten the thousands of workers covered under a supplementary unemployment benefit agreement. We are talking about mothers and fathers. When the government rolled out its Canada emergency response benefit, it was overwhelmed and it forgot about them. The government can fix it right here, right now. Does it want to do that?