Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to start by thanking all the witnesses, who have done a great job of representing the various concerns that I've heard from so many in the industry. I thank you all for your presentations.
I'm going to ask two questions. The first will be a retrospective question. The second will be looking forward beyond the crisis at what we can do to help encourage the industry to have its full recovery.
Just before I do that, there's some context. Obviously, we've heard very well from many of the people on the panel today about the fact that this is an industry that has been among the hardest hit. It was one of the first hit, and it is going to have one of the most difficult recoveries. I think that's why it has been such a struggle to understand why there has been so little attention paid to the industry. This is a Canada-wide industry. It affects every community, and in some communities tourism is the entire economy. One of those, which is a good example of why this is something we need to be paying more attention to, is a community in my riding of Banff, for example, where essentially before this crisis there was zero unemployment. Now the unemployment is estimated at about 85%. That is the kind of hit this industry has taken.
Many of the businesses are small and medium-sized businesses, and what I'm hearing from the business owners is that the programs that have been put in place aren't going to help them. They're being left out of being able to access many of the programs, like the loan program, for example, and the wage subsidy because of the length of time it's taking. It was put very well by one of the business owners in Banff who came to me saying that, ironically, that program, which is designed to help the employees, is going to actually take so long to come into effect that his business may not be in existence anymore and, therefore, his employees will have nowhere to go back to work when this is all done.
My first question is this. Is the government's response currently adequate to help these operators be able to sustain themselves through this crisis and still see their business exist when this ends?
Second, when we reach the other side of this crisis, what measures will the government need to have put in place to help kick-start the tourism industry once again?
I wish there was time for everybody, but I'll ask three of you—TIAC, the Hotel Association of Canada, and the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada—if you could respond to those two questions, please.