Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here today. It's lovely to see some familiar Zoom faces.
I'd like to use our time here to walk you through a quick overview of what the restaurant industry has gone through since the start of this apocalypse, as well as what we are uniquely situated to do to help kick-start Canada's economic engine as part of our proposed recovery plan.
A deck has been shared with you, which I will walk you through right now. If you turn to the slide labelled “Pre-Tax Profit Margins”, we can dive right in.
Restaurants and the many small and medium-sized businesses that make up the Canadian food service sector are a critical pillar of our culture, economy and local communities. Before the pandemic struck, our industry comprised over 98,000 establishments from coast to coast to coast, contributing 4% to the country's total GDP. We served about 22 million customers each and every day.
Most Canadians don't realize that even during the best of times, the average food service establishment keeps less than 50 cents of every $10 spent on a restaurant meal. The rest goes right back into the economy.
As we are now nearly a year into the COVID-19 crisis, we believe that now is the time to reflect on what's worked and also maybe what hasn't. We need to begin paving the way for a post-pandemic future that will ensure that as many restaurants as possible are still left in the picture, so that they can continue feeding Canada's recovery, both literally and figuratively.
Two decades of growth were erased in two months at this time last year. Essentially, our industry fell off a cliff and then broke both legs. The truth is, we're still struggling. Prior to the pandemic, the food service sector was Canada's fourth-largest employer. We directly employed 1.2 million people. However, our industry lost more jobs in the first six weeks of the pandemic than the entire Canadian economy lost during the 2008-09 recession. No other industry has come close to facing this level of shortfall. There are still more than 380,000 fewer jobs in the Canadian food service sector than there were in February 2020. Meanwhile, all the other industries have recovered at least 85% of their pandemic job losses.
I want to touch on the fact that we really believe that now, more than ever, is the time to make doing business as easy as possible. Because we were hit first and hit hardest by this apocalypse, we are uniquely situated to serve as that fiscal anchor to guide our economic recovery, because we are job creators. With investments in support programs specifically for employers, our industry can make every subsidy or grant dollar go that much further.
In our chart of recommendations, I'd like to highlight some of the key pillars of our recovery plan. This will be shared with you once it has finished making its way through the translation hoops. As we transition through the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic and toward a strong and resilient recovery, there needs to be an evolution from emergency measures to a framework that supports business continuity and a favourable economic relaunch condition for the longer term.
With regard to the wage subsidy, we believe there are some enhancements and recalculations that should be made to the program to ensure that it's responding to the evolving economic and public health climate. Our restaurant relief model, which utilizes 2019 sales values as an essential and sustainable baseline, will allow our operators to stretch every dollar and truly invest in local communities by being a job creator across the country. Under this restaurant relief model, we're proposing that the wage subsidy equal 1.6 times the decline in 2019 sales, with appropriate adjustments made for new businesses that opened in 2020, up to a maximum of 75%. We are also recommending that the wage subsidy then be extended through April 1, 2022.
Looking at the rent subsidy piece now, we believe that the eligibility requirements for this subsidy program need to reflect the diverse and innovative food service business models. As currently drafted, the rent subsidy program does not capture the operational realities of multi-unit restaurants and, as a result, unintentionally leaves out many small and medium-sized business operators who are still struggling to survive this crisis. We are therefore recommending that the $300,000 cap on multi-unit operations across the country be eliminated and, instead, calculated on a per-location basis, again with appropriate adjustments made for new businesses that opened in 2020. We are also recommending that the rent and wage subsidy programs be extended through April 1, 2022.
Restaurant operators are resilient and resourceful, but they cannot continue to operate at a loss for months on end. If we want to build back a stronger, sustainable economy that continues to reflect our country's incredible diversity, our industry is the best place to start, and our restaurant relief model is the best way to do it.
I'll close by saying that, literally and figuratively, we believe restaurants are key to feeding Canada's economic recovery.
Thank you so much.