Yes, Mr. Chair, thank you. I didn't want to miss that opportunity.
In a way, Dan stole my thunder, because what we are concerned about is the cumulative effect of a lot of new taxes on our industry. Of a restaurant's costs, more than 30% is for labour, and that's where the biggest pressures are. A lot of them are coming from the provincial level, as he mentioned. We really pride ourselves on being the number one first job provider in this country. We think those first jobs are really under threat, given the cost pressures.
The restaurant business cannot adjust to a 32% increase in labour costs in 18 months. If you look at the margins of 3.4% in Ontario, for instance, and you do the math, you realize that there are going to be an awful lot of casualties as a result of that, business casualties but also workers who will lose their jobs and won't be able to find jobs.
We're appealing to the federal government to assist us in ensuring that we can continue to provide youth jobs. The youth hires program that was part of the Liberal election platform would be a great place to start, but I would say that labour cost pressures.... One of the things that people often say is, “You just have to raise your prices; it's as simple as that.” If it were as simple as that, why would we have razor-thin profit margins? We would just raise our prices so that we would have higher margins, but it's not possible to do so.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide my feedback on our number one priority.