There are critical infrastructures that support the travel economy. Hotels are one of them. Airlines are one of them. When we get back to a post-COVID universe, in order to have a functional society we are going to need this infrastructure in place.
With the numbers we're talking about, this kind of loss with 70% of the industry going down, what this means is that when we have.... There are only two or three hotels in some of our northern and remote regions. How do you get essential services up there to provide to those Canadians? How do our tourism regions survive? The first thing you do when you plan a trip is look to see if there's a hotel available. There are not that many hotels in P.E.I., as an example. If we start to see the crumbling of the infrastructure and flights reduced so that people can't move around, and if when they get there there's nowhere for them to stay, it will significantly affect the rebound of the overall economy.
It's not just about Canadians booking their next holiday. It's about people moving around this country and having the infrastructure there to support them. It's about the rebound of business travel. It's about our downtown cores. What attracts people to downtown cores are the events: the conventions, the festivals, all of those things. Our cores are hollowed out right now. Our hotels have been sitting empty for 12 months. We can't even bid on those international events if we don't have an accommodation sector to support them.
My plea to this committee and to anyone who is listening today is that we cannot let the critical infrastructure that supports this industry crumble. The cost on the other side would be even greater to the government, on the backs of Canadians, and to the functioning of our society.