Finance Committee on Dec. 9th, 2021

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

That's okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The first question is to the Hotel Association of Canada. In my riding of Miramichi—Grand Lake, and the greater region, we are well known for our hospitality. I come from the salmon fishing hospitality world, so I have a great appreciation for the work that you do.

I'd say that our east coast hospitality is known around the world, but in saying that, I'm hearing from your members that they were being negatively impacted by the CERB program. I've heard from countless people who operate hotels that they can't find people to work. The jobs I hear about most frequently are for housekeepers, banquet staff and the front desk.

If you can't travel, if you're not permitted to travel or if there's a fear of travelling.... I understand how hard the hotel industry has been hit. That's only common sense, considering the global pandemic.

Can you tell me how the program negatively impacted your ability to hire, retain and recruit staff?

[Susie Grynol]

Sure. Thank you for the question.

The labour challenges that our sector was facing, even before the pandemic, were reaching the point of crisis. This is because demand to visit Canada and regions like yours.... Canada has become one of the most desirable places in the world to visit, so we were already struggling to find enough workers.

There's a global phenomenon here, where there aren't enough workers to support our economy into the recovery. That was exacerbated during COVID. We have been struggling to keep our doors open, but we did see some domestic recovery this summer in some regions like yours. From the calls that I got all summer long, we couldn't find enough workers. People don't want to come back. I will say that one of the issues that was voiced to me on countless occasions is that the CERB program was encouraging people to stay home, as opposed to coming back to work.

I appreciate that the CERB program was important and critical for a lot of individuals, including some of the witnesses here today, but it impacted our ability to attract workers back this summer.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

I appreciate that. That's kind of what we were learning locally as well.

One of the loopholes we've seen in the bill—any bill that any government is putting forth is not always bulletproof—was the paid sick leave and how you don't need doctors' notes. It's loosey-goosey. Anybody could say they're sick and achieve the benefits, which would be another hindrance to the Hotel Association.

The industry can't fill the previously mentioned positions sometimes, because a large number of hotels are turning to the temporary foreign worker program, only to find out that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada can't process these files in a reasonable timeframe, considering the well-known crisis that you already alluded to that exists in your industry. I just wanted to verify that, because I understand how the pandemic must have affected the hotel industry overall in Canada.

I appreciate your answer, and I have one question now for Mr. Saretsky. We've heard that Canada's real estate has gone up so much that the Canadian public is basically all but expected at this point—although it's not the best practice—to remortgage their homes and use that equity to pay for food, gas and utilities in an already unaffordable Canada, due to inflation and Liberal mismanagement. However, to turn around and give the businesses money to pay their bills....

Why can't the businesses take the equity out of their buildings and pay the bills the way that the rest of Canada has to in this climate?

[Stephen Saretsky]

I can't speak too specifically on the businesses, but if you look at where the banks are lending money and where the credit growth is, it's all in the residential mortgage space. As I said, residential mortgage credit growth is running at a 10-year high and that's obviously inflating house prices. If you look at business credit growth, it's basically stagnant.

Maybe the banks are looking at it and saying there's risk in refinancing a business for them to go and spend on capex, for example. I think it's probably just a risk thing for the bank.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Stewart.

We're moving now to the Liberals for five minutes.

Mr. Baker, you have the floor.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks so much.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

Just before asking my question, I want to continue on the subject that Mr. Stewart was just asking about. I think it's important also to remember for broader context, and I think this was mentioned in the response to his question, that the labour challenges existed before the COVID pandemic began for a range of reasons. These presumably vary in different parts of the country and for different providers in the tourism sector. One of the key challenges, based on the reading I've done and The Economists I've read from, and also from what I've heard from my constituents in Etobicoke Centre who run businesses, is that the labour shortage is to a great degree driven by the fact that during the pandemic we had very little immigration. That has affected the labour force, not just in tourism but across all sectors. I think that's really important to remember.

I also think it's important to remember that Bill C-2, which is what we're here to discuss, is a pivot, as the finance minister spoke about this morning. The pivot is designed to really provide targeted support for those enterprises and those individuals who need it most. That's one of the key reasons for that pivot.

To the tourism association, when you look back, if the government hadn't put in place the previous support programs, such as the emergency wage subsidy, what would have happened? I apologize; it's not the tourism association but the hotel association.

[Susie Grynol]

We simply wouldn't have an industry standing today. We would have lost the anchor businesses in this sector. Here I'm talking about the hotels, the convention centres and the attractions. We would have lost hundreds of thousands of tourism operators who provide those Canadian experiences, not to mention the indigenous experiences we have across this country. We would have lost significant infrastructure in the travel infrastructure space, in the fleets of RVs and buses going back and forth. In our air sector we would have had a collapse had it not been for the support.

The reason Bill C-2 is so important is that we are so on that brink of collapse in our off-season with growing travel restrictions around us. Our goal here is to preserve the core anchor businesses within the sector so that we have the infrastructure standing on the other side to allow the sectors to build back.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you for that.

Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You have two minutes.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Some MPs, I think some on this committee, have suggested that maybe it's time for COVID supports to come to an end. How would your members respond to that? How would you feel about that, and how would your members respond to that?

[Susie Grynol]

I think if you look at the economy as a whole, there are sectors of the economy that are building back. I think when the government in the budget looked at when to wind down these support programs, there was some logic to doing it at the beginning of the summer, and then it was extended, because the government can't be in a position where it's making every sector of the economy whole again. This has just been too deep and devastating a pandemic for that to happen. But there are some sectors, like ours, that have suffered disproportionately as a result of this pandemic and that have not had one single opportunity to recover over these last 19 months. We're not out of it, because now we're in our off-season. Our recovery, we think, is going to start in the spring as we build towards the summer.

So there does need to be some consideration in government policy response for those hardest-hit sectors. You know, we were booming before the pandemic. In this industry we're not hurting because there's been some sort of a shift in human behaviour. If anything, travel is going to come back with a vengeance. We have so much demand on the books. People want to come back and get married every day of the week and have international conventions. The phones are ringing, but today we're not yet in a position to welcome people back to Canada. We want to have this sector alive on the other side of this, and that is precisely what this bill would do.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you so much for that. I love your enthusiasm.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Baker.

Now we're moving to the Bloc and Monsieur Lemire for two and a half minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am going to go back to Ms. Prégent.

Ms. Prégent, today is December 9. The holidays are approaching, in about two weeks.

I would like to know more about how the troops are doing, compared to last year, for example. There were more general assistance programs for artists, particularly the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the CERB, and the CRB.

Does the fact that the holidays are approaching add to the feelings of urgency, of psychological distress, of sadness or of melancholy? What could the consequences be for people in the cultural sector?

[Sophie Prégent]

In my opinion, the consequences will clearly be devastating. The longer we wait, the more urgent the situation becomes and the worse the problem gets. Currently, it is very difficult to reach our members. Why? As you probably know…

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Madame Prégent, can you move the mike just a little closer to your mouth?

[Sophie Prégent]

Can you hear me better now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, that's better. Thank you.

[Sophie Prégent]

I am sorry, Mr. Chair.

Let me continue my answer to Mr. Lemire's question. At the moment, it is difficult to reach our members. You have to understand that a career has highs and lows, and that income levels are always a series of peaks and valleys.

I will speak for the Union des artistes. As you probably know, the artists who are members of the Union des artistes have access to an RRSP, to which they and the producers contribute. Never have so many of our members withdrawn funds from the RRSP as they are doing now. It means that, at 65, they will no longer have any money in their RRSPs. Because the situation is so urgent, the only way they have found of getting money is to withdraw all or part of the funds in their RRSPs.

Everyone here probably has a way of contributing to their own RRSP or pension fund. Imagine that circumstances forced you to withdraw the funds in your RRSP at 37, at 40 or 52 years of age. That is something that once could not be done at the Union des artistes. We have had to become more and more flexible, because there have been more and more requests. However, what used to happen two or three times per year before the crisis now happens two or three times at each of our board meetings, every two weeks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

An RRSP becoming a safety net is shocking. Urgent action is needed.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Now we're moving to the NDP for two and a half minutes.

Go ahead, Mr. Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

Ms. Kobluk, one of the things we've heard from the government is that Bill C-2 is about moving into the recovery phase of the pandemic. One of the other things we often heard from the government, not just recently, but particularly during the election campaign—which was before they had announced they were going to be summarily ending the CRB program in October—was that they're committed to not leaving anyone behind.

We're seeing a recovery where financially vulnerable people are having benefits clawed back. There isn't ongoing income support for a lot of people who are still struggling in an economy that isn't easy, in light of the pandemic. There are financially vulnerable people who are being pursued to repay debts. We then see on the wage subsidy side that there have been companies like Bell, Telus and Chartwell that received huge amounts of public subsidy and then paid out large dividends to their shareholders. They even increased the annual amount of their payouts by anywhere from 5%, 6% or 7%.

At a higher level, when we talk about the principles of the recovery—what it means not to leave people behind and to make sure that we have a fair recovery and that we're building back better—does Bill C-2 represent a move in that direction, or does it paint a very different picture of what the Canadian recovery is going to look like?

[Devorah Kobluk]

I think Bill C-2 is optimistic, and maybe unfairly so.

Let's think about who needs what. On October 23, the Canada recovery benefit ended. On that same day, almost a million workers qualified for the Canada recovery benefit.

I was speaking to some of our workers' rights allies yesterday. They mentioned that over 600,000 workers are forced to work part-time, so they actually aren't getting by. Their bank accounts have not recovered yet. They're being left behind, and with every month, it gets worse. That's also what we're seeing with seniors: every month it gets worse.

If we look at the fact that these people have lost their GIS, now it's going to be five months if they don't change this. That's 15% of their yearly income gone, which they are being asked to continue to lose. If we think that some seniors in the first month may have had some very small savings, and people entering poverty often don't—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Ms. Kobluk.

We're moving now to the Conservatives.

Mr. Chambers, you have five minutes.