I think all of the measures that have already been mentioned are important, but we are in a very competitive industry. Right now the entire world is shut down, but the reality is that we are going to come back at some point and we're going to be competing with other countries that, I think, have given a lot of thought to this.
TIAC has put a committee of leaders together to start putting their heads around what we are going to need coming out of this and how we are going to be successful in doing that. You can see from initiatives that have been taken in Japan, the U.S., Germany and in Taiwan, they're already announcing major packages, 10-point plans, to deal with the return of tourism. I think we're going to be behind the eight ball if we are not in a position to rebound quickly or as quickly as we possibly can.
One of the most important things right now is that—and you're going to hear it again, I'm sorry—we need the liquidity measures to work, to be put in place and to be done immediately so that businesses can stay in business. Most tourism businesses are shut down right now, as you know. I think Susie would tell you that the only hotels that are open are open for humanitarian reasons and they're basically doing a public service. The situation is very dire. The first thing we need to do is to make sure that those businesses stay in business because there will be no recovery if everybody's gone out of business.
For the small and seasonal businesses, if you look at the Maritimes, where you're from, I think you would agree that probably over 80% of tourism businesses are seasonal. Those businesses are the ones that.... In fact, I raised the issue with the wage subsidy that, for these seasonal businesses that don't open until May, there's no point in having a subsidy where you're measuring your losses based on March and April if you weren't even open. The first thing we need to do is to get the relief package right so that the industry can survive, and we need to quickly turn our attention to recovery.
I think there are a number of things that we can do and that we can see other countries have done. For instance, in Japan, they're suggesting that they would subsidize accommodations up to $260 a night. They would provide credits and other incentives for people to go to restaurants and visit local venues, and buy from local merchants, those sorts of things. They've already started putting their heads around this and they've already committed a trillion yen in their aid package, which I think is worth about $13 billion Canadian.
We need to get our relief right in the first place and do that very quickly to make sure the industry's still there, and then we have to turn our attention very quickly to the recovery.