Extract The crisis and the social net | How the PKU saved the economy

The Canadian Emergency Benefit (CEP) will have been an effective response and up to the needs during this pandemic, writes the author, despite what the right has been able to say about it, which has tried to make the citizen feel guilty by making him believe that he had touched it perhaps without being entitled to it.

It is obvious that the federal government has deployed unprecedented financial assistance to directly help citizens, but also to support businesses and the economy. Without these measures, the portrait of our society would have been very different.

I remember how, following the decree confirming the health crisis, the employment insurance system suddenly collapsed like a house of cards. I remember the hundreds of people calling us every day, those distraught citizens and employers who were looking for answers. We received between 100 and 200 calls every day from March 16, 2020. I have vivid memories of this period, and I still wonder where we drew the strength to continue our work without respite, day after day, sometimes from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Our lines were congested; we hadn’t finished writing down the messages as the voicemail box was already filling up. We had set ourselves the goal of calling back each person who left a message on the voicemail the same day. We have succeeded. It is an employee of the Montreal Regional Council of the Federation of Workers of Quebec, Sylvie Majeau, who saved us by offering us her help. She made some 30 to 40 calls a day from her home for weeks. This is what allowed us to catch our breath.

If I have to remember one element, only one, of the balance sheet to make of this period, I would say that this emergency service, the PKU, has helped, even saved, many people, millions of people.

It can be argued that fraud has taken place, even on a large scale (often by organized groups); it can also be argued that people have applied for and received this type of benefit knowing full well that they were not entitled to it. All of this is true, but the result remains the same: the PCU will have been an unprecedented rescue operation to directly assist the citizens of this country. And this operation worked.

One can easily imagine what the lives of millions of people would have been like without this direct and rapid financial contribution. It should also be understood that this direct aid was immediately “transferred” to the local economy. I dare to argue, from my field experience, but also from the observation of other past crises, such as that of the 1930s, that this emergency service probably saved the country’s economy.

On April 6, 2020, when people were able to start filing an application online or by phone, everyone held their breath: was the “machine” going to hold up? Today we can say that yes, she resisted. The unemployed workers were able to start collecting these benefit amounts deposited in their bank accounts the very next day, often in duplicate (or more) because the government wanted to advance a first month and pay another in advance. . It all happened in a big hubbub, but at the end of the day, the plan worked. And this is the important thing.

We ourselves in the office began to feel the reassuring effects in the following weeks. The flow of calls decreased, there was less anxiety, less uncertainty among people. But we were not at the end of our troubles. From the end of April, barely a month after the entry into force of the PCU, it was necessary to manage something else: the insecurity generated by the right-wing discourse, that making the citizen feel guilty after having perceived the PCU, making him believing that he had touched it perhaps without being entitled to it, and that he should repay, at the very least be ashamed and “atone”. ” Shame on you ! », We were going to answer these birds of doom.

The crisis and the social safety net
Why the right does not like PKU

Pierre Céré

Éditions Somme, November 2021

104 pages