I appreciate the work of the government; however, our strong assessment is that the current measures will not help indigenous tourism businesses. Of our 1,900 businesses, most of which are completely shut down now, many won't reopen.
It is a liquidity issue, as many are saying. Our challenge is with raising and borrowing money on reserve for about 30% of those 1,900 businesses. We can't borrow money on reserve traditionally, through the banks. There are other realities to borrowing money on reserve, and that's a big challenge for that business sector of our economy. That speaks to the recommendations we made around the importance of flexible funding through the aboriginal financial institutions. We need to get on with that as quickly as possible. While the measures are appreciated, and some off-reserve businesses will access them, they will be very modest. We expect a lot more major challenges for sustainability.
As for the future, the government announcements and a lot of marketing organizations are talking about recovery and how to bring customers back. We know that tourism in Canada is a strong industry, and we know that indigenous tourism has a lot of great experiences, but the fact is, if we don't find short-term cash injections like we've done with the $25,000 grants and then find more stimulus long-term financing options that are indigenized and indigenous-specific, it'll take us 10 years plus to rebuild to where we are today. It's going to be a big challenge for us going forward.