Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our witnesses for being here today. We hope your families are safe and healthy.
These are very important issues that you're raising. We cannot have a catastrophic impact on the hospitality industry, on restaurants and hotels, that will mean we will go deeper into the economic difficulties caused by COVID-19.
My first questions for Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Oliver are around the issue of rent abatement. Other countries—France, Denmark and Australia—have provided really effective rent abatement policies. All of you have pointed out in your testimony that the system of loans just does not work. The idea that businesses should go deeper into debt isn't one that is going to mean long-term viability for the hospitality industry.
What I and Gord Johns, who is the NDP small business critic, have proposed to the government is a rent abatement program based on what is done in some of the other countries, whereby the federal government would underwrite 66% of the rent abatement. In other words, the property owner provides a rent moratorium for the small businesses in the hospitality industry, and as a result of that, the federal government underwrites two-thirds of it. There's a shared sacrifice that allows for the longer-term viability of the industry.
It means, of course, that the property owner continues to have a tenant after the crisis, and it means that the hospitality industry, the restaurant, can actually continue on. What do you think of that idea of rent abatement, with the federal government underwriting two-thirds of the cost in order to get us over this crisis and to allow restaurants to continue building their market and their businesses?
That is for Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Oliver.