Quebec’s health measures cost at least half a billion dollars a week in federal containment benefits, according to estimates from Ottawa, which now runs a much less targeted program than expected because of the Omicron variant.
The federal government on Wednesday unveiled the calculation of the projected costs of its Canada Lockdown Worker Benefit (CCWP) in the Canada Gazette, a publication that details its new regulations.
The PCTCC is a program similar to the defunct Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), but less generous and accessible only when an authority has decreed a confinement. It offers $300 a week to employees and self-employed workers who lose income due to Public Health closing or reducing the capacity of their workplace. Eligible workers can apply retroactively to December 19, 2021.
That week, Ottawa changed the eligibility rules for the benefit, passed just days earlier by Parliament, so that Quebec and the entire country would be considered sufficiently “in lockdown” for workers are entitled to it. The government was then prepared to spend at least $2.4 billion a week to provide this benefit across Canada, an amount that could theoretically rise to as much as $5.4 billion a week, according to estimates released Wednesday.
For Quebec, the floor price for benefits is estimated at $1.1 billion for two weeks. Since we are in the fifth week of benefits, the amount intended for Quebecers would amount to at least 2.75 billion so far.
The Department of Employment and Social Development Canada calculates the minimum amount of benefits based on the premise that as many workers will use them as the CERB, when it was offered, ie 44% of the active population. The ceiling amount of the PCTCC is imagined from the improbable scenario where the entire active population would resort to it.
Omicron changes the definition of “containment”
The federal government’s plan to make its new benefit a highly geographically targeted program has been completely disrupted by the arrival of the Omicron variant, shows the evolution of the regulations concerning it observed during the month of December.
“Initially, the Canada Lockdown Worker Benefit was to be a targeted benefit used regionally in the event of full shutdowns or stay-at-home orders,” the department reports in the Canada Gazette.
Formalized by Bill C-2, which received royal assent on December 17, the PCTCC was then “not designed to respond to the scale and nature of current public health measures, due to the narrow definition [d’un] ‘containment order’ that fails to take into account the impact of widespread capacity restrictions”.
For example, the restrictions imposed by Quebec only on certain non-essential businesses from December 21 did not fit well with the federal definition of “containment”. As revealed The duty, Ottawa hastened to make its benefit available to Quebec workers affected by these closures.
The day after the new restrictions came into force in Quebec, the federal government changed the eligibility criteria for the PCTCC to temporarily include, until mid-February, orders to reduce the capacity of public places. at least 50% in its definition of “confinement”. Thousands of workers across Canada have thus been entitled to the benefit.
Only the Far North was “in confinement”
We also learn that before the revision of the definition of “containment order”, on December 22, only a dozen communities in the Far North, including seven in Nunavik, Quebec, were technically confined, according to Ottawa.
Workers in Kuujjuaq, for example, were entitled to the PCTCC as of October 24. The largest village in northern Quebec and its 2,132 inhabitants entered during this period in the red level of the scale created by the Quebec government, a level which forces the closure of all non-essential businesses. The estimated cost of the benefits paid for these first eight weeks of confinement would be from 1.7 to 3.9 million dollars, and this, for Kuujjuaq only.
Since the October announcement of the creation of the PCTCC, Employment and Social Development Canada has been analyzing what the media has to say. Initially, he notes “some reactions” to the fact that the program would not be accessible to workers who lost their jobs for lack of being adequately vaccinated, in an otherwise “neutral and factual” coverage.
Then, following the spike in COVID-19 cases coinciding with the arrival of the Omicron variant, “particular media concerns that the current benefit structure is too restrictive and that workers affected by the public health restrictions may not qualify,” the officials report.
The federal government’s latest economic update provides $20.4 billion in COVID-19 related income support for workers for 2021-22. This amount should encompass the bulk of the costs of the PCTCC, whose death is scheduled for May 2022. By comparison, $74 billion was paid out in the form of CERB. Its replacement, the Canadian Economic Recovery Benefit (PCRE), distributed 28.4 billion before its dissolution in October 2021.