Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon to the committee.
Tourism HR Canada's mandate is focused on building an inclusive and resilient workforce, so I will focus strictly on the workforce matters. There are 750,000 jobs directly attributed to revenues derived from tourists and this accounts for 2% of GDP. These jobs would not exist if it were not for the visitor economy. Many tourism businesses receive significant revenues from local residents, which support additional employment. When we measure everyone working in tourism, we employ 1.8 million Canadians. That's roughly 10% of the labour market. When we consider all economic activity and tourism industries, we contribute 5.1% to Canada's GDP.
Three weeks ago we did the first forecasting on job losses due to COVID. In the short term, we estimated losses as high as 770,000 jobs, based on a metric of 70% revenue loss. If you look at the moratorium on hiring students or casual labour for the sector during the peak season, it's another 215,000 to 230,000 who will not get tourism jobs. Normally there's an increase in hours for permanent staff and these, too, will not be realized.
Current evidence suggests that job losses are at the higher end of our projections. Restaurants Canada estimated that 1.2 million will lose jobs in the food services sector. Only two weeks ago they reported that, and already 800,000 have lost their work. We heard from Susie earlier about the Hotel Association of Canada's estimated 250,000 job losses, 153,000 of which are in Ontario and Quebec alone.
The measurement metrics are different on these different projections—different time frames, different scenarios—but the story is the same. It's on a very large scale. It's across Canada. It's in every corner of Canada and it's affecting more than 10% of the labour market. New data from the Conference Board this week is suggesting that 2.8 million jobs will be lost in the economy in March and April alone. If you look at what's attributed to tourism, the losses account for 840,000 jobs in the same window of time, which is slightly higher than what our original projections were. The longer the disruption, the greater the job loss will be.
The job losses were immediate and companies faced liquidity issues, especially since the shock was immediate. Most of these job losses were hourly wage earners and it impacted all five industries that make up the sector, with the food and beverage and accommodation sectors being most impacted. With the recent announcement on wage subsidies and the ongoing adjustments to CERB, we can expect that there will be some job recovery, but employers tell us that lag and uncertainty about recovery time means that employers are also encouraging workers to seek the benefit while they try to stabilize.
Now we need to get businesses focused on workforce recovery initiatives, which is hard to do while they're still grappling with liquidity, but this will be a growing concern. Recovery is dependent on the ability of companies to quickly gear up and adjust to the new reality. It's about skills, first and foremost ones that help employers retool and train to focus on the Canadian domestic market, on how to rebuild financial reserves, on how to develop new business models and low overhead and increased margins, on staff that are more versatile and so on.
The bottom line...? Investment and training in retention programs is essential. When you look at research done on other recovery models, bar none, investment in training at this stage of these pandemic-type issues resulted in the highest return on investment when it came to recovery. It's a new business environment and one that requires improved resilience to fare future disruptions. People need to be retrained or upskilled to be prepared.
The wage subsidy program that was announced and the changes that were made to it over time, the flexibility, has made a huge difference. There's no question. People are much appreciative of what the government has done. Speaking strictly from a workforce or labour perspective, I just want to encourage the Government of Canada to act soon on funding to support training and to help businesses retool so that they can successfully recover.
The pre-election budget last year mentioned $1.7 billion over five years to create a tax credit and pay for dedicated time off for workers to take skills training. Perhaps this is worth revisiting.
As a final note, due to the economic impact on people's discretionary spending, the Conference Board, in a project with us, indicates that it does not expect spending on recreation or culture to return to normal until 2021, and that consumer spending on accommodation, food and services will not return until December 2021 or early 2022. All of this suggests that there will be a volatile and unstable labour market for well over a year, and it's time for us to also think about the employee side of this equation.
Thank you.