Thank you for the question.
I think you've raised the interesting point that the aerospace industry is found right across the country. It may not be in as many ridings as hotels, but right across the country, in every single region of the country, you have an aerospace sector.
You're right to point out that through the pandemic, we lost 35,000 jobs. Our GDP contribution went down $9.4 billion. We were appreciative of the government for some funding support in budget 2021, which was great, but we have a lot of very serious concerns with the luxury tax that is being placed on the industry. It came into effect on September 1. There's a 10% tax on the manufacturers of those aircraft.
You're right to point out the 35,000 jobs. These are highly skilled, highly paid jobs in every region of the country.
One of the points that I think is sometimes lost, which I really want to make clear, is that this is not just on the manufacturers; this is on the supply chain, which goes right across the country. We're seeing impacts in British Columbia, Winnipeg and Montreal, obviously, where a lot of the planes are manufactured. There are huge ripple-out effects right across the country. There are big concerns.
We were also very concerned that the government did not do its own economic analysis in bringing in this tax. That's why we went out to HEC Montréal to do an independent study. That independent study showed 2,000 jobs being lost. Of those, 750 jobs were on the manufacturing side; the rest were across the supply chain, right across the country. The report also showed a reduction of $29.9 million in income tax being paid by those workers who are no longer going to be there, while the Parliamentary Budget Officer is predicting a $9-million return in taxes. The numbers just don't make sense.
I think the bottom line is that if you're building fewer planes, which we will be because of the tax, you're employing fewer people to build those planes. That's the bottom line.
Thank you.