Thank you very much, Chair.
First of all, I want to extend my sincere thanks, through the staff of the CRA, to everyone who worked on the front line and implemented the CRA's various benefits. Thank you very much.
I remember vividly the conversation I had with a young individual who was homeless at the time. I think it was during the first two weeks of COVID's hitting us. I saw this young man. He was in the cold, and I was concerned about him. I went to buy some food to give to him. I asked him how come he was outside and not in the shelter, but the shelter had shut down. There were hundreds if not thousands of individuals like him at the time in Canada who didn't know what to do.
I remember two things, two feelings that I had in my mind. It doesn't matter if you were a politician, a bureaucrat, a person with a job or a person without a job, we were equally vulnerable to COVID risks without the protection of the vaccine at the time. We were equally important. Our health and safety is equally important, because the virus is so contagious that it could affect anybody in the country.
To you, Commissioner, can you describe the importance of getting these supports out to the public and making sure that those Canadians at risk didn't have to worry about going to work to earn that payment to feed their family at that time? How important was it to Canadians as a whole in the first, say, few months of COVID, when we didn't know enough about the virus and how to protect Canadians from it?