Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate being invited back here once again to meet with this group.
My association represents all of the lodging industry right across Canada. We did about $13 billion in revenue last year. About $11.5 billion is generated as value-added for other sectors. We employ about 270,000 people; needless to say, they are in each and every riding, right across the country.
One of the things I always like to point out when I appear before committees is that we're an industry that the government typically likes. Last year across Canada we generated $5.1 billion in taxes, of which about $2.3 billion went to the federal government. We kind of like those numbers, and you people kind of like them. We still aren't at the levels we were in the year 2000, when we hit our peak.
The one area that I'd really like to emphasize strongly this afternoon is that in business, successful operators have two maxims. One of them is that we never have enough business, and the second one is that you should never leave any money on the table. Well, we believe very firmly that the federal government is leaving a whole bunch of money on the table when it comes to marketing and promoting Canada around the world.
We've heard, and it's in our written brief, that if the federal government invested an additional $100 million annually, they would have an ROI of up to $620 million coming back to them. I wish I knew where I could take money like that and get that type of ROI. It really dismays me when I see that the Government of Canada isn't making that investment.
The second item I want to talk about very briefly is the fact that we have a shortage of people working in our industry. I'm sure that a lot of other sectors are making the same case to you. This is particularly significant out west, in Alberta and B.C., but we're feeling it in a lot of other sectors, including the Muskokas, Tremblant, and places like this.
There is a program in place called the temporary foreign workers program, run out of human resources development. This needs to be expedited. We need to get people in here now. It is just not happening. That's critical to us.
I have a couple of other points, very briefly. One of them is that we're delighted that the Government of Canada continues to support the infrastructure program, but we do see them needing to take more of a leadership role in upgrading the national highway system. In fact, we would see the elimination of the $22 billion maintenance deficit as being key.
The air system in Canada needs to be overhauled. We need to remove the security charge. We need to adopt Open Skies. We need to increase foreign ownership. We also need to cancel the planned rent increases in Canada.
The final one I want to touch on very briefly is something that impacts all of you as parliamentarians--the government rate, and the process by which the government rate is established across Canada. The Department of Public Works has come in with a new policy and process. It doesn't work. It doesn't take into account the business cycle of hotels. It does not take into account the business cycle of people travelling on government business. The two aren't working together. They've imposed new rules on us. All that's going to happen is we're going to end up with a lack of good rooms for you and the rate is going to go up. We're trying to work with them, but it's falling on deaf ears.
Mr. Chairman, I've tried to be brief. Thank you very much for this opportunity.