Hi. My name is Kiranjit Dhillon, and I worked for the Pacific Gateway Hotel. Thanks for inviting us today.
I want to speak about the budget's proposed government subsidies for businesses and about our hotel.
For 17 years, I worked as a room attendant at the Pacific Gateway Hotel. I cleaned rooms and took pride in my work. I raised my children on this job. All that has changed. When the government took over our hotel as a quarantine site, it brought in the Red Cross. Other people were trained to do our jobs. The hotel recently fired 140 of us. This month, they terminated me and many of my co-workers. Out of 40 room attendants, they got rid of all but four workers. The owners are destroying our jobs. We are losing everything we worked so hard for. Some of us had been there for decades.
Our hotel isn't closing. The owners just applied to build two more hotel towers next door. The owners used the wage subsidy, but they didn't put us on it. Our government is giving the hotel millions of dollars while we lose our jobs, and now the hotel owners will get another subsidy. We shouldn't lose our jobs because of the pandemic, especially when people are getting vaccines and travel will be starting again soon. If the government wants to help us, it should stop giving money to our hotel or to any hotel owner that uses workers as though we are disposable.
Thank you so much.