In response to a request for information at the hearing, the department provided the following information in a letter.

Emergency Processing Fund

The Emergency Processing Fund (EPF) is a one-time, federal investment of up to $77.5 million to help companies implement changes to safeguard the health and safety of workers and their families due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an additional priority consideration for meat processors (objective 1). The funding also aims to aid companies to improve, automate and modernize facilities to increase Canada’s food supply during COVID-19 (objective 2). The fund is one part of the greater Government of Canada response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 75% of the funds were committed to the first objective which was to implement measures to safeguard the health and safety of workers due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

$20 million of the program’s funds were delivered through a third party for projects seeking less than $100,000. The remaining balance was delivered federally for projects seeking over $100,000.

Of the federally delivered projects[1], approximately 70% per cent of the respondents indicated that they maintained or increased their production level. See Figure 1.

Note: not all recipients reported on the increase in production and additional reports are expected following project completion, as per reporting requirements.

Figure 1—Distribution of Responses (Normalized) to the Relative Change

Of the projects that were delivered through a third party organization[2], 88% of recipients responded their production since onset of the project was the same as pre-COVID-19 levels or higher (Figure 2).

Figure 2—Level of Production Ultimate Recipient Organizations