Thank you very much. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to speak before your committee.
My name is Leo Ledohowski, and as its chair I represent the Manitoba Hotel Association. It's an association that started in 1927, and out of 327 hotels in this province we represent about 90% of them. We're a not-for-profit that's dedicated to improving the hospitality and tourist industry.
My full-time job is as president and CEO of Canad Inns. We have about 2,100 employees. That puts us up in the same cluster as Great-West Life, Investors Syndicate, and Inco. We're probably in the top four or five private employers in the province of Manitoba. Last year we had 7.5 million customers go through places such as this.
We have, speaking in my role as chairman and from my position in my company, a vested interest in the tourism and hospitality business. In Manitoba, at last count—and these numbers change—about 65,000 people are employed in the hospitality industry, with a contribution to the provincial gross national product of roughly $1.3 billion. My numbers may be a bit dated; I think they're higher than that now.
We are in general very pleased with what we're seeing coming out of Ottawa, in the sense that lowering your spending while retaining essential services is, I think, important.
We have a bone to pick, if that's the right term. You recently removed the GST credit for foreign travellers, and that creates a bit of a problem for our industry. I'm sure there's a lot more to it than just recouping the $75 million. Our challenge to you people, rather than screaming at you, is—at least from my point of view—how do we use these resources to create a better environment for our industry? Perhaps the $75 million it was costing was not as good as some better use of the resources. My understanding from what I'm reading and seeing from Ottawa is that this seems to be the approach, and I'm hoping that's the case.
In Manitoba, export tourism is 40%, local is 60%—that is, from within the province it's that amount. My challenge to you is to use that $75 million in a constructive way to make the industry even better, not necessarily spending more money, but taking the money that's already being spent and spending it more effectively.
I have some points outlining where I think we can make some very interesting and quick changes. The first one is in lineups at the border. In the case of export tourism, it really frustrates me when I fly back to Ottawa, coming from Boston or someplace—and that's a transit point—to come off and find there are two airplanes, there are 400 people, and there's one customs clerk. It's two hours in the lineup. She's a very friendly customs clerk, she's beautiful, and she handled herself with poise and dignity, but one is not enough. Somehow, I didn't think it was a surprise that there were 400 of us coming in. I think there are airline schedules, and people should know.
Coming across from North Dakota, where we're expanding into the United States, the lineups are really quite harsh sometimes. Included within them are not only the tourists from Manitoba who are coming back, but the American tourists coming forward. Solving some of this is something that could be done quickly.
I applaud the efforts being made, which have been somewhat successful, so that we don't all have to have passports and Americans don't have to have passports to come in and out. I think that's a great step.
Another easy one to do, I think, involves the exemption levels for goods and services. That amount has been flat at whatever it is—$250 for 72 hours, or something—and I think some of those things are detriments. They really don't generate a whole pile of revenue, and they just annoy people and stop traffic. With free trade now, our prices are not that different, so there's not too much we're getting out of it.
To talk about efficiency, at our firm we're very dedicated to community—pay equity, and items such as this. However, to get into pay equity specifically, we've just spent probably a thousand hours, if not more, of time to go through the requirements of the federal bureaucracy for pay equity. I think sometimes the rules just impede. There was an energy program that we just bowed out of because it took simply too much time.
Another positive that I think we should focus on is that the highways are very important for us. I think maintaining the highways for the transportation of tourism is very important. Tourism is a world-class mover in the sense of employment, and I think we should do whatever we can to help it.
The final comment I have--and I know time is short--is that our industry, like every other industry, is short of skilled labour, and we applaud anything that will help in the provision of skilled labour. It fits in with the previous panel. It's very important for the expansion of our industry.
I thank you very much, and I think I kept it within the time.