Thank you, Chair.
Let me begin by thanking all of the witnesses for appearing and presenting their views on what is, for me, such a hugely important sector of the economy.
I am fortunate enough to have been born and raised in Niagara Falls, so I know the importance of the tourism community. In fact, my community itself is the number one leisure tourism destination in Canada. We employ over 35,000 people and we have 16,000 hotel rooms in our community. We probably get about 14 million people who visit here annually, and that generates over $2 billion in receipts.
Almost immediately that has disappeared. We need to work together to ensure that we put together some programs that can be of assistance not only immediately, but also to see us forward in the recovery.
My question first is for Ms. Grynol.
Susie, I was really interested in some of your comments, given the unique situation of our hotel sector. We're talking about thousands of hotel rooms and properties, many of which are owned by individual families, which is unique in a number of areas. They're not owned by corporate entities. Here in Niagara, we have every chain and franchise you could ask for, but they're owned by just a few families.
As the sector has grown, so have they. They have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the community. They're heavily leveraged, so the notion of liquidity—that term is being used so often. I was interested in some of the comments that you mentioned about carve-outs and programs such as expedited loss and carry-back.
The notion in your March 23 letter to the government about the waiving of the GST/HST for the first quarter kind of builds on something that the Conservative Party has been talking about recently and my colleague mentioned the HST refund for the previous year.
I was wondering if you could expand on some of that and maybe touch on the example of Niagara as well.