Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon, honourable members.
I am pleased to be here today. I will deliver my remarks in English, but I will be happy to answer your questions in both languages.
Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today.
My name is Jean-Christophe Bédos, and I'm here on behalf of the Alliance for a Visitors Tax Refund. The Alliance for a Visitors Tax Refund is a coalition representing Canadian businesses across our retail, hospitality and tourism sectors. We created this coalition to advocate for a policy that we feel brings significant benefits to the Canadian tourism industry and, specifically, to small and medium-sized businesses.
As your committee examines the budget implementation bill, I'm here to advocate for Canada to reinstate a modernized digital visitor tax refund program on GST and HST for eligible retail purchases made by international visitors.
There are three main reasons why Canada should adopt a modern VTR system. VTR stands for visitor tax refund.
The first reason is the benefits to Canadian workers and small businesses. First, this proposal brings new visitors to local businesses across Canada, resulting in more local spending, new jobs and more vibrant main streets. This is because small and medium-sized businesses represent 99% of the tourism sector in Canada. Longer tourist stays and higher spending directly benefit local retail, but also restaurants, hotels, local attractions, entertainment and everything that attracts tourists to our country.
It is important to note that this proposal is supported by key industry leaders, including the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, or TIAC, and the Retail Council of Canada, or the RCC. Both recognize the real impacts of a VTR program for local retailers and tourism operators.
Moreover, what do the actual results look like? An independent analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, the CEBR, based out of London, U.K., shows that a VTR system would bring an additional 200,000 new visitors to Canada, generate nearly $700 million of additional spending every year and create more than 38,000 new jobs across the country. This is important for our economy.
The second reason the VTR is critical is a matter of Canadian competitiveness. Canada, as we know, is a proud, pro-free-trade economy, which means a lot in today's world, I suppose. We believe Canada's approach to international tourism should reflect this commitment, yet today, retail purchases by foreign tourists are Canada's only taxed export. When international visitors shop here, we tax the goods they take home.
Numbers show that Canada is actually currently lagging behind competing global destinations. We are one of only three OECD countries without a VTR system. Consequently, we are missing out on a massive opportunity to be a strong tourism economy. The numbers provided by Statistics Canada show that tourists gladly visit our beautiful country. However, they spend very little compared to what tourists spend in countries offering a VTR system. In fact, over the last 20 years, the spending per capita by individual tourists in Canada has decreased year on year, every year. Tourists come to our country, but they do not spend in our country as much as they do when a visitors' tax refund system is offered—