Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's webinar. I'm AED's Vice President of Government Affairs, Daniel Fisher. This morning's webinar is a Canadian public policy update. Our speakers are Rob Laforte and Kyle Larkin from Impact Canada, AED's Canadian-based, Ottawa-based public affairs firm. Before I turn it over to Rob and Kyle, I'd like to let those of you who are live with us know that you may submit questions during the webinar via the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen. The slide deck from today's presentation is available as a PDF in the course tab on the webinar registration page. This webinar will also be recorded so that you may watch or re-watch on demand at your convenience. With that, I'll turn it over to Rob and Kyle. Thank you very much, Daniel. We're glad to be joined by the AED members today and we want to take an opportunity to provide a political update as there have been quite a few new developments at the federal level and provincially across Canada over the last few weeks. We know that summer is high time for equipment dealers and that the construction season is well underway, although, you know, it looks different than at any time in the past. We have certainly seen quite a bit of traction at the federal level and, you know, infrastructure remains high on the priority list of a lot of the federal politicians and civil servants that we're speaking with, as well as stakeholders that AED interacts with on a regular basis. So I'm going to just share my screen here. I've got a deck to give us a little bit of context today and hopefully you all can see this right now. Let me just start off by saying, you know, the last months have been challenging for all businesses across all sectors, but in particular we know that, you know, the construction sector has been one where there's a sense that things are going okay among politicians, among decision makers, among policymakers, and they are unfortunately comparing the sector to businesses that have in other sectors gone completely to zero or that have seen, you know, tremendous revenue declines and they think of the problems in the context of the airlines and the hotel sector and tourism operators, restaurants, others that have been very hard hit, among them, you know, retail especially. One of the challenges with that is that we are working through communications issues where we know that, you know, being on, being busy, being, you know, at work doesn't necessarily mean you are entirely productive, entirely efficient, entirely profitable. And in the construction sector, in heavy civil, in infrastructure, it's important that profitability remains. It's important that, you know, barriers to doing business are overcome quickly in order to ensure competitive bids are available on future projects, that capital goods are being invested in, that contractors are buying equipment, renting equipment, and servicing equipment. So those are all things that we're communicating very actively at the federal and provincial levels. I'll move on just to give you a quick update of what's going on with federal politics. You can see here, you know, we've got Justin Trudeau at his daily briefing location in front of Burrito Cottage here in Ottawa. Prime Minister Trudeau is facing, you know, one of the most challenging situations that any prime minister has faced, but he is doing it with a very strong level of support from the two men to his right on this slide, Jagmeet Singh and Yves-Francois Blanchet. Jagmeet Singh, for his part, he is in a very difficult place politically. He is having, you know, significant trouble raising revenue. He's also having difficulty communicating his message past the Liberals in terms of being the progressive option. They have been wedged pretty heavily during this, and what certainly is the focus for the NDP is trying to push the Liberals onto even more left-wing priorities. They have been very critical of the government for taking their ideas, like the canned emergency response benefit, and pushing it out, you know, after the fact, once the NDP brought it up, when it was convenient for them. Yves-Francois Blanchet and the Bloc Québécois, they have tried to push the Liberals on a number of things in their negotiations that have also resulted in the Bloc, you know, being in a more influential position than the NDP and being more able to constructively relate and work with the Liberal Party. So, in addition to that, what I want to also mention is that Blanchet, for his part, he has been accused of sexual misconduct in the past. There was an anonymous allegation made against him earlier in the month of July. This is a trend in Quebec politics. It's a trend of more anonymous claims coming forward, and, you know, he has denied them, but the damage has been done politically for him, and part of what he has to do over the next little while is demonstrate to people in Quebec that their party is still able to get a lot done, to get concessions from the Liberals in order to keep things rolling. They have been successful in that regard over the last couple of days by striking an agreement with the Liberals to extend the Canada emergency wage subsidy into December, something the Liberals wanted to do, and also change the structure of the program, which we'll come to a bit later on, but the concession that they received was more support for Canadians with disabilities, which was a big priority of the Bloc Québécois early on. You'll notice that I don't have a presentation slide here with Andrew Scheer, and that's because I wanted to focus next on the Conservative Party. Yes? If I could just add on the last slide there, just the overall political lens. I would say prior to the pandemic, what we heard from Liberal MPs and Liberal political staffers was that there was, you know, an entente between the Bloc Québécois and the Liberal Party to work on legislation together so that there'd be a Quebec lens on all legislation and that it would easily be passed in the minority parliament with Bloc and Liberal votes. I would say what we've seen over the pandemic is kind of a breakup between that entente. Yves-François Blanchet has been a lot more active, a lot more negative on the government and Justin Trudeau, and he's even called for his replacement as Prime Minister, and that has pushed the Liberal Party to look for a new ally with the NDP. So, for example, if you look at a vote two, three weeks ago in terms of proroguing parliament for the summer, the Liberals got support from the NDP. The NDP were bashed a bit by the media and other pundits because of that decision, but I think you're seeing more of a working relationship between the NDP and the Liberals, and I think that's something to consider for a variety of different associations, but especially AED that's made up of a lot of businesses, small businesses, large businesses, when you're thinking about where does the emergency response benefit go, what are the conversations on a universal basic income, different leftist policies that have been spoken about in recent weeks. I think that's just something to consider with that new shape of the minority parliament. Absolutely, and talking about the left like that, we've got to make sure that we come back to the right, especially given the circumstances with Trudeau and the emerging We Charity scandal. So, the Prime Minister, he has definitely been under fire, there's no question about that, and recent polls have showed that his reputation has taken another hit. The folks who are competing for Andrew Scheer's job, Peter McKay and Aaron O'Toole among others, but these two are the front runners, they have absolutely made it much more difficult for Justin Trudeau, and he is underscoring a bias that people, a belief that people already have about him, which is that he is blind to ethical concerns, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and he is here to help his friends. And Peter McKay and Aaron O'Toole, whichever one takes the helm of the party, I won't try to read the tea leaves on that one just yet, they will be inheriting a position where Justin Trudeau is much weaker than at any point over the last four months. However, he still remains very far ahead of them in the polls. There was a lot of discussion, even three weeks ago, about the potential of there being a fall election. We did not buy into that as much as many did, just because of the fact that the Liberals would be seen as being hypocritical on telling people to stay indoors, telling people to stay home, and then trying to mobilize for a campaign. But it now seems like it's even less likely that there'd be a fall election because the scandal has taken some wind out of their sails. That said, Peter McKay or Aaron O'Toole, whoever takes the helm of the party, they will be trying to climb out of a hole. And the hole that they have to climb out of, it's not incredibly deep, but think of it less as them trying to gain a tremendous amount of support, and more as them trying to diminish Justin Trudeau's support and fracture that support that they have from the left and from the center-left. Part of what they're going to want to do is make it a little bit easier for the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois to have some strength, though they will want to hit hard at the Bloc Quebecois in the province of Quebec. Yeah, I would just add that, you know, I think the conservative leadership race is a lot closer than what Peter McKay would have wished for. I think, you know, if you look back six to eight months ago when it kind of kicked off, Peter McKay was well in the lead of all the other candidates, but Aaron O'Toole has really made the race a lot closer than Peter McKay would have wished for. I spoke to a conservative-esque journalist last week who said he thinks Peter McKay has the race in the bag, I guess you could say. But I think the race is much closer than that. Aaron O'Toole certainly has framed himself as a true blue conservative. He's gotten support from Jason Kenney, for example, which kind of shows you what conservative roots he's kind of coming from. And obviously, we all know Peter McKay, past leader of the Conservative Party. From what I've gathered from Liberal MPs and political staffers, they're much more nervous about Peter McKay because of his progressive roots, because of his progressive tendencies. He, you know, folks think that he'll be more competitive in the GTA, more competitive in Atlantic Canada than Aaron O'Toole would be. So, you know, looking forward to a future election, which could be around the corner, or could be early 2021. I think the Liberals are really conscious about who takes the helm of the Conservative Party. Yeah, you're absolutely right there. I think the one thing that would hurt Aaron O'Toole, if he were to take the helm of the party, it looks like his path to victory is through gathering supports from Derek Sloan, who is one of the other contenders. And Sloan has positioned himself as the voice of social conservatism. He's positioning himself more so for the long term, I think, than for being the leader of this party right now. But he will have strong following and out of those followers, if this gets to a second ballot, if Peter McKay or Aaron O'Toole doesn't win it on the first ballot, I think you can expect more of Sloan's voters to go to Aaron O'Toole, who's been more libertarian in his positioning. I believe that if Derek Sloan ends up as a kind of a kingmaker for Aaron O'Toole, Aaron O'Toole will face some of the difficult challenges that Andrew Scheer has felt in terms of the way that the Liberals and the NDP attacked them on social conservatism. Either way, whoever takes over the Conservative Party has a strong lead over the other opposition parties to say, we're the next choice, we're the next ones up to be the government. If the Liberals continue to, you know, take missteps and score own goals over the next few months. That's federal, and there's more federal to come. But I wanted to take a look at some provincial trends as well. Provincially, we know that the governments have been taking the leadership role on health and, you know, their number one concern for the month of August across almost all provinces is considering how do they get kids back to school. And getting kids back to school is a major component of economic recovery across all sectors. In particular, it's gotten a lot of attention over the last little while, because of how important getting kids back to school and childcare is for getting women to participate in the labor force. And the statistic came out just a week or two ago, that women's participation in the labor force has dropped the lowest level we've seen in 30 years across Canada. All governments, whether they're progressive, conservative, NDP, liberal, conservative, they're concerned about that. And childcare and daycare is a key component to this, as well as helping segments of the economy recover that have high levels of women employed. So one of the biggest challenges that stands in the way of the schools reopening, it's not even cost, it's not even logistics, it's that the trend of COVID-19 cases has now started to head upward. I don't think if you live in any part of the country, anyone feels that they are doing better today in addressing COVID-19 than they were at the end of June. Even in my home province of Nova Scotia, people that I talk to are increasingly concerned that there are more cases coming in, that there's more transportation between the borders, that there are more international travelers than we've seen through the early days of the pandemic. And that concern is only exacerbated as you go across Canada from east to west. You know, Quebec is not doing as well as they were. Ontario is seeing record cases, and this is a tweet from just this morning from Minister of Health Christine Elliott. You would not expect a Minister of Health to express concern like this, even mild concern, with a cautionary note, if things were heading in the right direction. This would be a much more positive note. This would be much more hopeful and optimistic. This language is really couching things. And I believe that, you know, here in Ottawa in particular, we've seen days where there were no new COVID cases, where there were one or two. And now almost every day for the last week, we've been in the double digits of new cases. And that's extremely concerning for, you know, the overall trend. Those are higher numbers than what we had seen even in May. So, you know, if June was a good month, and July has been a bad month, then it's very concerning what we can expect for August, especially as the province continues to reopen and the economy continues to reopen. I think we're seeing more of the same in Manitoba from the folks that I've talked to, Saskatchewan as well, Alberta is emerging as a hotspot, and BC has seen even more cases. All of this makes it harder for decision makers to go ahead and say, this is how we're going to do school, this is how we're going to get kids into the classroom, or into daycares. And that's going to have a major effect on all aspects of the economic reopening. Most importantly, I think here is the amount of support that the federal government has had to give the provinces. You know, you all saw the budget numbers, the amount of money that's available to the provinces to help support their COVID-19 response and efforts does have a lot to do with how they cope with things like reopening the economy or opening schools or providing personal protective equipment to healthcare workers and, you know, preparing for a second wave if that's what we are expecting. And I think, I think that is what most of those decision makers are expecting at the provincial level. The federal government has said that for this year, there's going to be a $354 billion deficit. That includes an assumption that more folks are going to be using the emergency wage subsidy, which we'll get to in a moment. It also presumes that fewer people are going to be on the emergency response benefit. And I don't know if that's necessarily an assumption that I would make, but it's what the decision makers of Finance Canada have said. To date, there's been over $280 billion, sorry, $180 billion spent on COVID-19 efforts. And the big pot of money that I want to draw some attention to is the $19 billion that was committed last week to provinces and municipalities. Out of that $19 billion, $7.6 billion is going directly to municipalities to support things like transit operating costs and other expenses that they've taken on. Their operating revenues have declined, and that's made it more difficult to do things like keep permitting offices open and have the municipal government support there that, you know, gets more public projects going. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities had been calling for a $10 billion support package. So you can see that there's a bit of a gap there and that the federal government is going to have to do some more borrowing in order to support them. We anticipate that it'll happen over a few months. But one of the things they've tried to communicate here, I think, is that nobody is going to be getting exactly what they asked for if it's just a huge amount of money or a blank check. And the government didn't really give a blank check here. What was asked for initially was a blank check. I talked to some folks in the Deputy Prime Minister's office who said they wanted to make sure that they had some strings attached to this because otherwise they would have no guarantees about how the money was going to be spent, whether it was going to be spent on, you know, initiatives that were tied to COVID-19 or other projects. This is a little bit more structured than what the provinces or the municipalities have been asking for. They wanted a bit more, you know, they wanted to be a little looser. And I think you will see more money come their way over the next couple of months. But the government's keeping a bit of powder dry at the federal level, even though it doesn't seem like that. They're still gearing up to do more stimulus funding in September or October. So where does that leave us from a legislative and a business standpoint? Bill C-20 was just introduced. This is the bill that contains the expansion of the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. This is one of those things that the government intends to spend a huge amount of money on over the next couple of months. What they would like to see is more people get off the emergency response benefit and more people get on the wage subsidy. In order to do that, they had to make it easier for businesses to qualify. To this point, you'd have to have 15 percent decline in your year-over-year revenue for a given month in March or 30 percent for April, May, June. This extends the ability of more businesses to apply and to access wage supports. But it also makes it more difficult and less lucrative for those who have had, you know, a 30 percent decline or just over a 30 percent decline. One of the things that we do expect over the next little while is that once this is passed, once this is in place, even if they have to continue it after December, they'll likely make the amount of wage subsidies smaller. So if you have had a business that's gone to zero and you're still plugging away or it's gone to, you know, 90 percent reduction in revenue, one of the ones that gets thrown out there a lot is travel agencies. Nobody's traveling right now. So if they've had a 90 percent drop in revenue or a 75 percent drop in revenue, any of the companies that have had more than a 50 percent drop in revenue will get topped up even more than the existing wage subsidy provided. For those that have had less than 50 percent of a hit but more than 30 percent, they'll see a little bit of a decline over the next couple of months in what they're able to claim from the government. But any business that has seen some decline will now be able to ask for some money to support wages at their business. They hope that this will get more people back on payroll, whether they are working or not. And I think, you know, a couple of the things that we know from the perspective that are really important here is that, you know, if your company has a division that's doing really well and a division that's not doing really well, or you have a, you know, a provincial breakdown where, you know, in one province you operate as a certain entity and another province you operate as a different entity, you know, one province could be a place where construction was essential and another could be a place where construction was not deemed essential. You might be seeing, you know, not a full 30 percent decline across the board, so the reporting entity wouldn't qualify. Now, if you see any reduction, you will be able to qualify for some support and it helps the business make a business decision between, you know, one jurisdiction or another and one division or another if they need to keep people employed in certain parts of the business. The Safe Harbour Clause, that allows any businesses that have planned out for July and August already to ensure that they receive at least the same amount of funding that they would have been eligible for in April, May, or June, so that's a good thing from a continuity perspective, and, you know, we can take some questions on this after because I think it's, you know, it's not simple and the bill is yet to pass, but we expect it to pass later on today. A couple of quick points about construction overall. The sentiment of confidence in the industry has certainly increased. This is information from the Ontario Construction Secretariat, which, you know, we have had some contact with. We definitely see more contractors saying that, or sorry, fewer contractors saying that they'll need continued government support over the next little while. They'll still need it, at least a third will still need something to avoid their business going under or shrinking, but you can see the gap between, you know, early or late April and early June. This is a good indicator. We want to see that get to zero. In addition, how much more bidding is actually happening. These are your customers, you know, we certainly see the drop in less bidding happening as a good indicator, and, you know, even that 10% are saying more bidding is occurring, versus before the pandemic. That's a good thing too. We probably need a little bit more data over a longer period of time to really feel out exactly, you know, what this means, but the sentiment is improving and, you know, you folks are all still feeling the pain for sure, and we understand that. The goal is to try to get, you know, more stimulus out there, more investment infrastructure out there, and the ease of those investments to increase as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Kyle. Kyle's going to talk a little bit about the pre-budget submission that we're putting in to the federal government. The budget submission is for spring 2021, but what we anticipate will happen over the next little while is that some of these recommendations will be pillars of AED's advocacy throughout the fall. If we get them sooner than later, we'll be very happy, and, you know, the push is to get this for construction season 21-2022, but, you know, we definitely will hope to see more in the near term. So Kyle, I'll move the slide and then over to you. Thanks, Rob. So yeah, just to explain a bit more about the budgetary process, so every year the House Commons Finance Committee launches a pre-budget consultation where they accept submissions in usually the first week of August, and then they'll hold hearings throughout the fall, and then they'll come out with a report of about 60 to 80 recommendations in December, which they send to the Minister of Finance and the Department of Finance, and then it's in Minister Morneau's hands or whoever the Minister of Finance is at the time to put together the budget, which usually comes out in February, March. Obviously things might change because of the pandemic, but that's the usual process, and so this year the Finance Committee once again is receiving submissions the first week of August, and this is what AAD is proposing to the government to take action on in their budget in early 2021. So the first one deals with the Accelerated Investment Incentive, which was launched in the fall of 2018, so prior to the incentive, heavy equipment and other capital assets were able to be depreciated at a rate of 15 percent. the government increased this to 45%, but AD is now recommending 100%. And this is based off the tax cut that happened in the United States about two years ago, where they increased their incentive to 100%. So because of the new trade agreement between the US and Canada, because of the economic impacts of COVID-19, we believe that 100% would help to spur economic activity, would allow construction companies and other companies that are looking to update their equipment to be able to better afford that equipment and get some of the most efficient and environmentally equipment at the same time. So moving into the second recommendation, one of the big issues that we've seen over the past five years through the Invest in Canada plan, which is the national infrastructure plan by the Liberal government, is that while they've committed large sums of money, there hasn't been consistent spending. And the parliamentary budget officer has consistently come out and said that the spending is lagging behind. There's different reasons why this is. It's either provinces maybe not earmarking projects or municipalities not be able to handle the load of money coming at them. Or the federal government not working closely enough with the provinces and municipalities. There's a wide ranging number of issues, but the parliamentary budget officer came out with a report about three, four weeks ago that said the government is still $2 billion behind on their plan over the five year period. So that's something that's a large concern usually, especially now with the economic downturn. We're looking for that money to get out there to projects so that companies can restart and the economy can restart faster. Our third recommendation there relates to, so the way that the invest in infrastructure plan was built, and this has always been the case, the Conservative government, the Harper government built it this way, the current Liberal government built it this way, previous governments have put out their infrastructure plans this way, is that it's usually a sliding scale going upwards in terms of an infrastructure investment. So the first couple of years are usually smaller than the last couple of years. And what we're recommending here is that the government take some of those billions of dollars that are at the end of the 12 year plan and place them in 2021 and earlier years so that they can commit and invest more dollars in infrastructure to allow the economy to rebound faster. Recommendation four is around the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Obviously, there's been some controversy around this bank since its establishment, but the biggest thing is that it's lagging behind on finding those private partners and making those investments in infrastructure. So the bank has been given $30 billion to work with private investors and create different projects that would have a return on investment for private investors. We're looking for the infrastructure bank really to start those investments, start the projects and get shovels in the ground. So we haven't seen that yet. The bank's been around for a few years, so it's time for them to get moving. Recommendation five, we can have all the infrastructure investments in the world, but if we don't have the skilled labor that exists, then the projects won't be able to start and they won't be able to continue. So we're looking for the government to continuously promote apprenticeships, the skilled trades to young Canadians and other Canadians who aren't necessarily involved in the industry and looking obviously for some of those skilled trades that have shortages in the heavy equipment industry. And lastly, we've all heard the energy industry in Canada has prior to the pandemic because of different international events and otherwise the energy industry has been struggling and then the pandemic came and it's been struggling even more now. So we're looking for the government to create a predictable project approval process. It's been something that hasn't existed in Canada for years now. You've seen it with various projects that have had to shut down or have pulled out of Canada. If you look at the Trans Mountain Pipeline, for example, it was originally a private project, but because the approval process took so long, the private investor wasn't able to keep their money sitting in Canada. So they sold the project to the government of Canada who are now building the project. And what we're saying is that the government can't buy every single project that exists out there. So let's create a predictable approval process that gets private investors either to a yes or no, but gets them out of that multi-year limbo where they've parked billions of dollars of investments in Canada without getting any return on it. So those are the six recommendations that we're looking at for the pre-budget consultation. We'd be happy to hear your thoughts on these, thoughts and recommendations, but that's what we're looking at right now. Thanks, Kyle. And maybe I'll turn it over to Daniel or to Liz. If there are any questions, I don't see anything here in our chat, but if anything has come through, we'd be happy to answer them or just expand on anything that you think we need to. Yeah, let's give it a minute and see if anyone types in a question via the chat box there. Rob, I'll ask you a question. I think one of the things we haven't spoken about yet is there's obviously been considerable impacts on hospitality and tourism. Almost 100% revenue loss. And some of the slides that you showed there, the construction industry has begun to restart gradually. And I would predict that the revenue losses in the industry have gone down over the past few months. So when the government is looking at stimulus actions in 2008, 2009, the main thrust was infrastructure investments. I think there's gonna be some slight differences in the stimulus spending this time around, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Yeah, there's a couple things, and I hate saying unpack, but I'm gonna try to here. There's a regional disparity here that I think is difficult to pull from any national numbers, especially the construction and infrastructure sector. There are parts of the country that never stopped construction, right? If I talk to friends of mine who were in downtown Halifax in late March, early April, everything was happening at the same pace and the same speed on buildings that were going up, excavations that were being done on new condominiums and office towers. They never really saw that same slowdown. And then there are places where the industry ground to a halt for weeks at a time. And that's one thing that I think the government's trying to make sure that they reflect in any stimulus. They want to make sure that especially if another province or territory has to shut things down because of an outbreak of COVID-19 or a second wave that's really harsh, that those jurisdictions and the businesses, families, workers, and all those places can equally benefit from any federal program. So I know that's one of the things that they're working through right now. They don't wanna throw billions and billions of dollars out there and all of a sudden, one part of the country can't benefit from it. So that's one concern. Additionally, they're starting to move out of their emergency planning stages. I won't pass judgment on whether or not that is too soon or not, but I do know that some of the things they're trying to figure out are low and no cost ways to create profitability in the sector beyond throwing money at it. So to your point about 2008 or 2009, that was a credit crisis and not a public health crisis. Two of the things that I know they are starting to put energy into are a national apprenticeship service and a national apprenticeship strategy. And part of the reason for that is that they know labor is one of the highest costs and one of the most difficult things for businesses to address. They're also making a lot of headway on things like regulatory harmonization, not just between Canada and the US and other international partners, but inter provincially and between jurisdictions. Those are elements of it as well. So they're looking for low and no cost ways to stimulate as well as ways to get money out there quickly. One of the things that we've been holding their feet to the fire on and trying to get answers on is they have said they're gonna introduce a fifth stream of the investing in Canada plan, the COVID-19 response stream. That'll be up to $3.35 billion of the total amount committed over the next 10 years that would just be for COVID-19 projects. Some of those would include things like adding on to public housing, adding on to public infrastructure, helping public buildings and this would be municipalities applying for it, helping public buildings have things like better air circulation. If it's a homeless shelter, more beds to allow for physical distancing. But I think they have run into some roadblocks with getting that out the door quickly and they're now contemplating, do we even really now need to do this? Because if you commit to money right now and set up a program, it's gonna be weeks before that money can even get approved let alone into the market. And we're watching construction season 2020 kind of run away in that regard. So they'll be looking at things like retrofits, they'll be looking at things that can happen over the winter time. The good thing about this for heavy equipment is at the very least what they can be doing with that is supporting contractors, supporting project owners, supporting municipalities with some revenue in those funds being delivered that allows for more continuity and hopefully allows for the 2021 season to get up and running very quickly. So they're definitely looking at it holistically. And the question you asked is kind of one that's on everyone's mind right now. So we do have a few questions. I think Kyle's very interesting question sparked a lot of other people's curiosity. So I'll go ahead and read some of these questions and you guys can answer. So with respects to the Safe Harbor Clause, if we qualify in July at 30% down, do we auto qualify in August the same rate as the initial CEWS program? So I'll clarify a little bit here. The Safe Harbor would be related to just the amount, right, that they would be eligible to receive. It does not automatically qualify you if you don't have some lost revenue, right? So if you were depending on receiving 75% today, I guess it was July 21st, if you were depending on receiving 75% and you'd made a business decision to keep people on payroll over July and August, you could expect to continue receiving 75%. If you were applying for July or August and hadn't received anything before now, it would be subject to that sliding scale. So that's my understanding. Kyle, do you have anything to add there? I think it's about continuity for those who have already been using the program. I think you got it. All right. So then we have a couple of questions from an anonymous attendee, who I guess we can assume is from Russia, maybe, for the sake of argument. When will the Canada border open? That's a great question. So Daniel, I think there's a few questions there that you could probably, you know, it's two birds, one stone, but I think my answer maybe would be a little more candid if there weren't Americans on the webinar. When will the Canada border open? I think the answer to that question, though, is it's really based on, you know, the public health response. I think public health officials in Canada are very weary of opening the border at all because of the resurgence in cases in the United States. I think, especially now that we're starting to see an uptick in Canada, I think it's going to be even longer before that border opens up to non-essential travel. You know, let's not forget that it's still open to essential travel. So truck drivers, trade, et cetera, are still happening. And the rate of the amount of people and cars and trucks that have been crossing the border has actually been increasing since a massive drop in March. So it's actually been going up and it's still going up. So while the border is still closed, per se, it's still opening up gradually to other non-essential means. So for example, a few weeks ago, Canada opened up the border to, let's say I had an American wife, so I would be able to bring her up, for example. So that wasn't the case before, but now you can reunite families across the border. So it's slowly reopening, but in terms of, you know, a complete reopening to tourism and non-essential travel, I think it's going to be a long time before that. You know, I think it's hard to predict, but I could see it going all the way until 2021. Yeah, I think just to add to that, Kyle, your key thesis is right, that it's gonna be a chipping away. It's not gonna be an all at once kind of reopening. A couple of things to add, not just to the resurgence of cases, but to the risk aversion of politicians, right? They're the decision makers, and it's not even a risk aversion from a public health context, which, you know, they consider and take into account. It's a risk aversion from a political context, which is if you open the border, and then, you know, you're the champion of it, and all of a sudden, you know, a month from now or six weeks from now, we're dealing with a 30% rise in cases or a 50% rise in cases, you wear that politically, and I don't think the liberals are hungry for that right now. They'd be the ones to make the call. In addition to that, at the same time, the folks calling for the reopening, I think there are 29 members of Congress who wrote to the prime minister about this in border communities. It's something that the White House, I think, wants to see as well. As the election in the US gets closer in November, I think the likelihood of the political willpower having much to do with it kind of diminishes, right? So until we see, you know, what happens in November, I would probably expect it to stay closed, you know, Kyle said, into 2021. There will certainly be elements of border limitations until probably the middle part of 2021, and that's assuming we get even close to having a vaccine ready to go. Well, according to our president, it's just gonna magically disappear one day, so I think we could hope for that sooner rather than later. Let's see here. How about, you know, this is a debate that they're having in the US as well in terms of national debt and the amount of spending going on. You know, do you see, I know in the US, at least in the near term, they kind of feel like, their policymakers feel like, you know, spend now, and then that will kind of, you know, alleviate some of the economic issues going forward, but I guess talk a little bit about the fiscal situation in Canada and where you see that going. Well, interest rates are low, so that's good. The ability of the federal government to borrow is very strong in Canada. It's really the only option they have. The chances of them even having a deficit that's under $100 billion next year, I think are probably pretty slim, and they're asking, they're committed to spending at least $354 billion, more than they have this year. What they are trumpeting is the fact that Canada continues to have one of the highest credit ratings of all G7 nations. They are, you know, very confident that the debt to GDP ratio is the best metric to work with. They certainly are of the mind that if you're not, if you're not saving for a rainy day, and this is a rainy day, then what is? You know, my expectation is that they will, with confidence, try to spend their way out of this, and the austerity measures that we saw in 2011 and 12 here in Canada to get back on track, or 1994 and 1995 to get back on track, those will pale in comparison to what we probably will see in the middle of this decade. But, you know, their thinking is, they're not going to get to make that choice if they don't spend it now. So, you know, I see spending continuing. I see employment supports continuing. I see, you know, new programs and committed funds being brought forward in 2021, 2022. The one thing that this raises for everyone is, you know, do we see corporate tax rates rise? Do we see personal income tax rates rise? Do we see sales tax rates rise? I do think that unless there is an election, which I don't see before at least the end of 2021, they're going to wait for some provinces to probably make a move or two on that, whether it's the provincial sales taxes or income taxes rates. That's probably where the feds will go because they can sit on a deficit a little bit longer. Their servicing costs are a bit less than the provinces. So that's a minute fiscal snapshot. Kyle, any thoughts? Yeah, I would just say that I've seen two different types of tax spoken about recently and advocated for in the media and by pundits and different leaders. First one is a wealth tax. The NDP have been talking about a wealth tax for some time. This would be a tax on, you know, the top 1% of income earners in Canada and would generate about $5 billion. So this is something the NDP are pushing. There's a few liberal MPs that are pretty favorable of it. Obviously $5 billion of revenue versus a $343 billion deficit is a drop in the bucket, but it is something the NDP have been advocating for years and they kind of see an opportunity here to get that policy through. The second thing I've seen advocated for is a two point increase on the government sales tax. So I think that probably would be the most controversial policy that a federal government could come out with. Obviously GST was a big conversation in the 90s, was a big conversation in the early 2000s. GST hasn't really been spoken about in politics for a while now, but it's resurging as a possible lever that the government could take to raise a quick amount of money. The challenge there though, is that it's been shown that raising the sales tax impacts everybody equally, but it impacts more deeply low income families and low income Canadians because they also need to buy the green pepper that you're buying at the grocery store, for example. So I think the government that is more on the left side of the spectrum is going to be very cognizant of that. And I would be surprised if they went down the line with the sales tax, but I've been surprised before. All right. Well, why don't we're kind of coming up against the hour here. So just answer, let's see. I think we kind of, when do economists predict the COVID recession will end? I think we sort of have addressed that. Nobody knows, right? I guess it's kind of- It's gonna depend on vaccine and availability, right? Unless we're all shut in for a month straight and nobody goes anywhere near each other. And then- I think the snapshots showed a good GDP growth in Q1, Q2, 2021. So that's what they're predicting, but who knows? Let's see. And then regarding the US political environment, I think you've kind of weaved that into a lot of the answers going on there. But I guess my question would be, how does Canada view Joe Biden? We know how you guys love Donald Trump, but. So, I mean, I think that the sentiment generally is Canadians feel like the relationship between the two countries will probably be better off with Joe Biden opposite, and only because of Donald Trump's like raising the flag of tariffs every now and then, that just kind of shocks the system a bit here. I do think that if you are, if you, let's say if Donald Trump loses in November, Joe Biden is president, and five years from now, people look back at Donald Trump's time in office and they say, you know, how did Canada do? The sentiment will be very much so that it could have been a lot worse, right? Whether it's inter cross-border trade, whether it's international relations, you know, it's not been as good as it could be, but, you know, it's probably not been as bad as it could be as well. I think in terms of Biden, his popularity is gonna be nowhere near what Barack Obama's popularity was in Canada, but in politics, it's all relative, right? Like, what are you comparing him against? That's the real, that's where the rubber hits the road. Well, yeah, I would say the relationship between US and Canada, certainly we'd be rejuvenated if Joe Biden were to win. Even if we had a conservative prime minister, even if, let's say, Peter McKay becomes prime minister in the future, I think the relationship between Joe Biden and a conservative prime minister would still be close. If you look at, you know, recent historical examples, for example, Barack Obama and Stephen Harper learned how to work together. George Bush and Jean-Claude Sein learned how to work together. Bill Clinton and Brian Mulroney learned how to work together. So the relationship between US and Canada has always been close, even if you're coming from different political ideologies. I think Trump is the exception in the recent 30-year history and it's not because Trudeau is a liberal and Trump is a Republican. I think it's, is Trump is kind of on his own agenda and, you know, there's a lot of things that have happened, the NAFTA renegotiation, the aluminum and steel tariffs, lots of things that happened that haven't happened in recent Canada-US relations. And I think the international relations part, Rob, that you spoke about is a big one. Canada and the US have always gone out internationally kind of side by side. I think that relationship has kind of broken down over the past four years. And I would expect that to come back quickly if Joe Biden were to win in November. Yeah, I'd say Canada did a poor job on its bid for the UN Security Council seat, for instance, and that's pretty widely agreed on. But being aligned more closely with the United States versus, you know, all other international partners probably hurt us a little bit too right now. And I think that it ties into the NAFTA question that I see there, you know, how will Canada benefit from the recent CUSMA, the NAFTA 2.0? I think the benefits are very similar. I think the two agreements are very similar. There were, you know, there were certain provisions on dairy products, et cetera. But I think it creates a stable trade relationship again between the US and Canada. I think confidence in private investors was really impacted by the years of renegotiations of NAFTA. And I think now that there's a trade agreement in place, it gives some of that confidence back to private investors. But like you said, Rob, you know, there's still the threat of tariffs. You know, aluminum tariffs have been spoken about recently over the past two weeks, even now that we have a trade agreement. So I think there's still some instability between both countries on the trade front. But, you know, CUSMA, NAFTA 2.0 is a step in the right direction. All right, and then why don't we just do one last kind of fun question here. Where will the Blue Jays play their home games? What do you think, Kyle? Well, I follow a lot of Buffalo area media reporters and they're all ecstatic that they're welcoming the Buffalo Blue Jays. But I see Pittsburgh is trying to get in there and they've offered up their stadium to become a hub city, sort of, I guess. So who knows? I think Buffalonians would love it, but Pittsburgh might be the natural choice. I won't put a pin in the map in a town, but I'd say factors they will consider are they will very likely have to be in an MLB stadium in order for this to occur, right? Like they have to meet all the standards of the fields and facilities that are available. I also think they will, if they're smart, they will pick somewhere that is easy to travel to and from without any risk of high likelihood of COVID-19 contraction. So I don't know where that would be in the US, but I don't think it's gonna be in Florida, for instance. All right. Well, with that, Rob, Kyle, thank you so much for your time, for this insightful discussion and for everything you've done for AED over the past few months. And we'll continue to do so. This webinar will be available to re-watch for those of you on it, or if you wanna send it around to others in your company. So with that, unless you guys have any parting words, I will say thank you and have a great day, everyone. Thanks for joining. Thank you very much. Thanks, everyone.

Canadian public policy landscape

infrastructure

construction sector

political trends

COVID-19 pandemic

skilled labor

AED's pre-budget submission

investment incentive

Blue Jays home games