Good morning and thank you to all the members and Mr. Chair for having me on as a witness. I will try not to be too long-winded, but I was born and raised in Nova Scotia, as Chris knows, where we like to tell stories.
I currently live in Alberta where I've lived for more than half of my life—just five minutes south of Calgary, actually. I've been in the entertainment business, the music business, for approximately 30 years. I'm very blessed. Up until COVID-19 hit, I had a very successful career, internationally, in the country music niche. I have also been a recording artist, audio engineer and video engineer for the aforementioned 30 years, and not only have worked on my own career but more importantly have aided in the mentorship of dozens of young artists and charitable causes.
COVID-19 has decimated our business and our industry as a whole. We immediately made moves, of course, as all good change managers do, to pivot, to try to find some economic resource for our entire team, not unlike the time we had to pivot a few years ago when our industry introduced streaming, when my company went overnight from six IPs to one IP and lost 60% to 70% of its revenue generation.
However, hours and hours of free online concerts and virtual appearances brought basically no economic relief, albeit with music—and I'm sure everyone here appreciates music. It made us feel good to be able to bring some solace and comfort to our fans with what we've been blessed to give in music. We were one of the small businesses—I would say “few”, but unfortunately, the more small businesses I've talked to, especially here in Alberta.... We were one of the few to fall through the cracks when it came to receiving any kind of federal economic relief.
In fact, we have a wonderful team of accountants and business managers who work with us, and they've been trying for months to access that funding to no avail. Our situation now is that our entire team and staff, of course, have been laid off. I would love to be the artist who gets to cry over spilled milk, but this is not just about me. It's about 3.1 million people who are directly affected in the entertainment business, who don't have work to go to and who are receiving no funding and help.
More importantly, hope, to us, is everything. We have nothing to hope for because every time something seems to open up.... It's like the shows I was supposed to do that have been moved multiple, multiple times. All of my staff, all of my team, all of those venues are now sitting on their hands again, not knowing what's coming. That, right now, is the absolute worst part for our mental health: not knowing what's going to happen a month from now, two months from now, six months from now, if we're going to be able to feed our families or not, if we're going to have to take subsequent work.
I've talked with many artists, musicians and techs who have been blessed to find other jobs and who will never, ever come back to the music business, to the entertainment business. They will stay working the jobs they've found because—and the rationale actually makes sense—when the next pandemic hits, we will be the first to be shut down yet again, although we treat our clientele with the utmost of safety, I would say, over most industries. Our insurance, our security, our clientele are put above everything else in our business, and unfortunately—