The Canada emergency business account loans were probably most used by small companies. Essentially, they were only targeting smaller companies. They could access them, and more than 900,000 did so. As a result, as we've learned, the debt that's been accumulated by small businesses has been quite dramatic. In sectors such as hospitality and tourism and arts and recreation, it's well over $225,000.
We're trying to figure out ways in which we can help them deal with some of that debt. Especially in hospitality, some of our members have told us that it's going to take them over a decade to be able to pay back that type of debt, if they ever can. Anything we can do to help with that would be good.
Of course, the Canada emergency business account loan was up to $60,000. Right now, $20,000 of that will be forgivable if you repay it before the end of 2023. Perhaps we could move that up to at least $30,000, or half of that, so they don't have to worry about paying back $40,000, maybe only paying back $30,000. Any little thing will help in terms of dealing with the debt they have. Extending it by one more year to pay will be good as well, because obviously by the end of next year some of them are still going to struggle to pay it back, especially in those hard-hit sectors.
We would encourage government to think about that as we get closer to the end of this year. Maybe we could have it extended to the end of 2024 for repayment, giving them just a bit more time to get their feet under them and get their businesses to recover. Hopefully, later this year or early next year we'll be closer to where we were prepandemic.