Four centuries ago the British playwright, John Fletcher, observed that “of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving.” If Fletcher were alive today, he could cite the criticisms of the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy program as proof. While hindsight may be unkind, no program is beyond criticism or the opportunity for improvement. As with other initiatives developed during the crisis, the CEWS' broad design inevitably led to some businesses getting payments they didn't require, while others had trouble obtaining the assistance they needed. Unions were frustrated with the lack of employment guarantees and recall rights. With the benefit of hindsight, Canada can better tailor job retention programs in the future, but it is important to keep in mind that the CEWS was designed in the heat of a crisis. Remember what the first wave looked like on the ground. Streets were vacant, store shelves were being emptied of everything from flour to disinfectants to toilet paper, and countries like Italy had been overwhelmed by COVID-19, with tragic death tolls. Businesses were shuttered with no idea how long it would be before they would open up, or if they ever would. To control COVID's spread, our governments put Canada's economy into a medically-induced coma at the cost of thousands of businesses and over a million jobs. The impact of the recession that followed was uneven, with some sectors and businesses being particularly hard-hit while others managed well. In normal times designing and implementing an initiative on this scale would have taken months, but CEWS and other support programs had to be developed in days. Because of the need to move quickly before more businesses were closed, government support programs were generally one-size-fits-all. Once we saw how the pandemic played out, they would be fine-tuned to concentrate the aid on the businesses and sectors that had been hardest-hit. Indeed, the program was modified throughout 2020 and 2021 to help scale it to the varying realties faced by businesses and direct the aid to companies that needed it most. The primary beneficiary of the CEWS is the employee. From the beginning, the program was predicated upon two key criteria: partial reimbursement for salaries already paid, and demonstrating revenue losses compared to 2019. Companies had to apply and qualify monthly. Companies that saw their business increase during the pandemic and treated the program as a windfall were correctly criticised. However, updates made to the CEWS program in July 2020 made the program most helpful to businesses who were seeing substantial revenue declines of 50% or more, and severely limited the amount of support provided to companies who were seeing revenue declines of less than 30%. This meant that CEWS was most helpful to businesses during periods like the lockdowns, when companies saw revenue severely reduced. A common criticism is that many companies went on to post profits for 2020. But the point of CEWS was to act as a bridge to a fully functional economy. While we still haven't recovered the growth lost in the pandemic, the rebound effect after each lockdown was stronger than expected. This is a good thing, fuelled in large part by the fact that Canadians could quickly go back to work that they still had in a business that had survived. In other words, CEWS did its job.  And, of course, companies that were profitable in this year or any other should pay their fair share of taxes. The best gauge of the program's effectiveness is how many jobs and businesses it saved, because we've lost far too many of each. And in the middle of global pandemic, Canadians working at big companies were no less worthy of the CEWS program than those working in small businesses. Once the pandemic ends, the government should announce a full, independent review of Canada's response to the crisis, including all of the support programs provided for individuals, other levels of government and businesses. We would also support releasing all data on CEWS-receiving organisations to the public. The purpose should not be to point fingers, but to permit an honest assessment of what we got right and what we got wrong in our response to the pandemic and to make sure we are prepared for whatever crisis comes next. We don't know when the next crisis will come or how severe it will be. All we know for sure is that we need to start preparing now. John Fletcher described hindsight as a form of wisdom. We believe he would agree that foresight is wiser by far. Perrin Beatty, CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Hassan Yussuff, President, Canadian Labour Congress This item first appeared in the Financial Post on May 28, 2021.