Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses.
I'm going to give you a minute and do a little preamble. I'm going to talk to you about the fish harvester benefit. While it's not possible, apparently, in your testimony today to get every nickel of misused, abused or prisoner CERB money back, you're going very aggressively at hard-working fishermen. The reason fishermen had a special program during COVID is that, generally, they don't qualify for employment insurance. They don't qualify for employment insurance because almost 99% of fishermen get paid, since the days of Moby Dick and before in whaling, on a percentage share of the catch. They do not get paid a wage. They'll go out, and they'll have days and weeks where they won't have any income, and weeks where they'll have a lot of income. Their records of employment—which Service Canada and everybody has and you guys have—show that.
The original application form on the Government of Canada's website—which is no longer up; it got altered about six months into the program—had four categories for fishermen to check in the process. It had self-employed commercial fisher; self-employed commercial freshwater harvester; indigenous fish harvester designated as equivalent to an enterprise head under a communal commercial fishing licence; and a shareperson, a crew member who earns a share of the revenue. You are eligible if you are shareperson, which 99% of fishermen are, and we're talking about people in the lobster fishery who lost a considerable amount of income as world markets dried up like other industries. Even though they went out fishing, there was no income because there was no market for the product, and that's why the special program was made.
I have quotes from many of my constituents who are having this aggressively clawed back by the CRA and who don't understand why, when their incomes were down anywhere from 13% to 75%, the CRA—which says on the form that if you are a shareperson, you're eligible for this benefit—is clawing it back.