Madam Chair, thanks for those opening remarks and helpful reminders. Last time there were a few interruptions to different speakers on the basis of repetition, and I appreciate the clarifications you've made. I certainly feel that repeating some points within an argument for emphasis' sake is one of my stylistic preferences. It is not in any way meant to waste time or to be overly repetitive, but is simply to drive home very specific points that I think are key within an argument.
There is one that I would repeat again, which I've made over and over and which, I again hope, opposition members will take to heart and maybe reflect on. This is the heart of the argument I've been making and what I've been expounding on in many different ways, and that is if a global pandemic is not a good enough reason for proroguing Parliament, then I would say nothing is.
I've been continuing to make the argument that the economic impact of this global pandemic—and I understand that it is first and foremost a public health crisis, so we really should be focusing at all times on public health, because you can't have a livelihood without a life. We've seen the tragic loss of human life. We must never lose sight of the fact that every life matters. I say that for all of the people and families and communities that have been so deeply impacted. The grief is almost unthinkable for those families.
One thing we've become slightly desensitized to is seeing numbers and statistics and focusing on public health data and graphs. We have to realize that these hundreds and hundreds of deaths and individuals who are in ICUs and who are on ventilators are all individual human beings with networks and relationships. They have made massive contributions to their communities and their families. They're loved and they have this fulsome life that is being taken away by a virus.
It's no one's fault. We need to get away from the blame game. At the same time, we need to really cherish those lives and honour those lives in everything we do. When we're doing this work and this study in this committee, we tend to be focused on the rear-view mirror and on how the prorogation happened. It's almost a distant memory at this point. I have tons of information on the reasons for proroguing, but it's faded in my memory just because there are so many more pressing things for us to be paying attention to that are immediately in front of us.
It is very disheartening that we're continuing with this. I've continually tried to be appeasing and flexible and adaptable to the perspectives of my honourable colleagues from the opposition parties. With that intention, I proposed an amendment to Ms. Vecchio's motion, that maybe we can do a little bit more study on prorogation but quickly move on.
We see that the opposition parties are not interested in negotiating or being flexible or really working with us on the things that I think are even more pressing. That's really unfortunate, and I really feel there's quite a bit of work to be done that is more immediately pressing.
The main estimates, which you mentioned, Madam Chair, are a pretty important responsibility for our committee. I think that would take one meeting. Perhaps that's an opportunity for us to fulfill some of our other duties.
Division 37 of Bill C-30, the budget implementation act, is an area that I've certainly been affected by and concerned about for some time. That's the prevalence of disinformation within election periods and just how much that can have an impact on our democratic institutions and some of the fundamental rights that we hold dear here in Canada. I really feel it's important for us to do the work on the pieces of the budget implementation act, Bill C-30, that are really required of us, if I were to be really honest about it. The Standing Orders define the parameters of PROC. This fits clearly within our mandate. I don't see how the finance committee will do that work, and the other pieces of their work that have to be hived off and given to other committees, if we don't do our part.
That's enough said on that, at the moment. I really feel strongly about that and Bill C-19. It's important for opposition members to realize that the adaptation powers for the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada come into effect upon royal assent of Bill C-19. Those adaptation powers would protect the health and safety of Canadians should opposition parties trigger an election, which they've been coming dangerously close to doing with some of the votes in the House. We're playing roulette at this point, or opposition parties are playing roulette, with people's health and safety, in my view, and I really think that's irresponsible.
I'll get back to the main argument that I've been making here. I have a lot more to say about the hardest-hit industries and sectors and some of the structural barriers to their recovery. They're no fault of any industry, or any industry players or businesses. Really, it's by virtue of the fact of how those business models are. I'll talk about restaurants or the food service industry. I spoke last time more about the airline industry. I covered a little bit about tourism, transportation, warehousing, public transit, commercial real estate and the retail trade. I left off talking about our local chambers of commerce and some of the work that was done around the digital main street initiatives, which I really felt helped some of the retail businesses pivot within the pandemic.
Again, I want to make it clear, just for the sake of relevance, that I believe in making an argument that's relevant at all times. This is relevant because what I've been claiming and substantiating with facts and evidence is quite clearly that the economic impact of COVID-19 is, at the very least, 10 times greater than the recession in 2008-09. Again, the heart of this argument is to say that this global pandemic, because of the economic impact being so much greater, if we were to say that an economic crisis or recession were a reason to prorogue Parliament and to reassess and re-evaluate and reset the agenda, and that's been a valid reason to prorogue Parliament in history....
I think this provides evidence as to why our Prime Minister chose to prorogue, and to use the prerogative that he had, between the first and second waves of COVID-19. I've been speaking to how this is rational. It makes sense. The process was substantive during that time. It really got to gather evidence and qualitative feedback from many stakeholders, which then fed into a throne speech that reflected that.
What I want to focus on today in my argument is just the depth of the impact on some of the hardest-hit industries, and then some of the things that were extended and even added, with some of the programs and supports that our government offered and that were redesigned coming out of that re-evaluation period during the time when Parliament was prorogued.
Again, I have to say this, because I feel that opposition members have implied many times over that the government sort of took a break at that time and essentially prorogued to just sit around and twiddle their thumbs. They have also claimed that the Speech from the Throne had nothing new in it. This is so false. It's factually false. If you look at the throne speech, it reflects the data, evidence and consultation work that was done during that time.
If you look at how much consultation work was done, as I've said before, I went to at least 15 different sessions. In my community, I did hundreds of surveys and consultation sessions—just me, and I'm just one member of Parliament. I know that my colleagues did the same. When I step back from this, even when I am trying to be charitable to my opposition colleagues, I still cannot find any evidence of how the overall narrative and story that we have provided, which are based in reason and evidence, are somehow deficient.
There seems to be no effort to assess the merit of the reasons that were given. I don't know how we got to this place. In my view, our government has done everything it can to be there for Canadians every step of the way.
I'm not saying we're perfect. I absolutely would not say that. I'm not perfect; none of my colleagues is. I think we all have things we can....
I know, Mr. Amos, you might be the exception, my friend, but for me, I can certainly admit various flaws.
We need to assess the merits of the report that was tabled and look at it on face value and ask what is deficient about the rationale. I can't find anything that doesn't make sense to me.
Okay. I'm in the governing party and I'm a Liberal. I get that. But I try to step outside of my perspective and critically evaluate and ask if there is any charitable or generous way that I can interpret the merits and the truth of the perspective of those who oppose my perspective. That has to be a part of our democracy and our debates at all times, because if we can't get outside of our own biases and perspectives, then we truly have lost our way.
However, when I do that, I still cannot find anything that doesn't make sense based on what I've seen and the data I have at my fingertips. I don't know where opposition members are really coming from when they are pushing the narrative that somehow prorogation was done for some ulterior motives that they seem to want to push. It seems just like a partisan political agenda that has no basis in reality.
I'm sorry to say that but, honestly, that is how I feel. I don't see any argument the opposition has made that really holds any water. I will continue to provide more data and evidence and to back up the claims that I am making, because I think they are the closest approximation of the truth. Until opposition members can actually engage in a fruitful debate on that, I think we're at an impasse.
You have your narrative and preferred interpretation, which are not based in facts and reality, and I have mine, or our members have ours. The difference is that we are providing evidence, data and reasons that make sense. The process makes sense. The themes in the throne speech make sense. The timing makes sense. The report is consistent with that. The testimony given by the government House leader was consistent with that. So what is this really about, when it comes down to it? What is it really about? I would say to you it's not about Canadians.
We're here to serve Canadians. I want to do things that are valuable to my constituents and not waste precious time that we as leaders in our communities have. We have been afforded the privilege and honour of representing the people of our constituencies, and I take that responsibility seriously and with great pride and honour.
At this moment in time we have a third wave that is.... We had the emergency debate last night in the House. Madam Chair, you were there on House duty with me, and I'm sure some of my other colleagues were as well. At least in that debate, things that were being said were starting to get beyond—or at least there were moments when we started to see just a glimmer of hope of getting beyond the partisan politics and focusing on what Albertans need right now to get through this third wave. I would say that at those brief moments in which we seemed to almost transcend the partisan swordsmanship and jousting, I thought okay, let's just go a bit further, one step further, and collectively come together and do our job for Canadians. That gave me just a glimmer of hope, but it was gone so quickly, and here we are back in committee basically ensnared in the same political jousting that to me is just unfortunate. It's more than unfortunate. It actually makes me feel sad. It really does. It's disturbing that this is what we're up to.
Anyway, I'll get back to my argument. Let me say a little bit about the retail industry. By June 2020, the retail activity had surpassed pre-COVID levels while payroll was 15% lower. This is kind of interesting just in terms of, again, understanding the impact on our economy and how unequal it is across industry. The retail industry in June 2020 was coming back. It rebounded very strongly. Retail activity surpassed pre-COVID levels, for a brief time, of course, because when we then had the full-out second wave, obviously that all changed again. Payroll was still lower, so in a way you would anticipate that in fact many retailers were more profitable in that time because their payroll was down but their sales activity was up, which is interesting.
Anyway, the point is that between February and May, sales had fallen by 18%, but e-commerce sales had doubled during the same period, which is interesting as well. I would say to you that many of the non-essential retailers were able to pivot to e-commerce, and I would link this back to our government's support. In my community, I know for a fact that the Digital Main Street initiative and the efforts made by our business improvement area in both our downtowns—because we're fortunate enough to have two in Whitby, in my riding—along with the work that the chamber of commerce did to help in the region of Durham, including my riding and others adjacent to mine.... They did incredible work to help local retailers move to online sales.
This didn't allow them to fully recover. It didn't insulate them fully from the impacts of COVID-19, of course, during the first and eventually second wave, but it did help.
It was interesting to note as well that many of the essential retailers, the retail stores that were deemed essential, continued to operate and actually increased sales dramatically. Again, just think about the equity issues here within the economic impact of COVID-19 and how important it is for our government to target support by taking the time to understand these dynamics and really listen to the industry associations that quite vocally were giving feedback.
Again, it was to inform our approach. Have we lived through this before? I haven't lived through a global pandemic. Has anybody here? Anybody here who has, please raise your hand. I see hands raised. Please give me a signal if you've lived through a global pandemic before. No. Nobody has.
Some of us may have studied global pandemics, but I would say that this one is not the same. It may have some characteristics that are clearly similar, which I'm sure Dr. Duncan can speak to, but I think that the state of our economy, the point in time, the moment in history, how this happened and the specific nature of the virus and how it's affected us are really things that none of us could have anticipated. I think it has had a unique impact in a way that we couldn't have comprehended before it happened.
It's interesting to think about it in terms of reflection and how important it is to learn from this, but also to realize that not every virus, not every pandemic and not every communicable disease is going to impact us in the same way. That's something else that we need to take from this. Being prepared for public health emergencies and other climate-related emergencies is going to take real adaptability and an ability to predict the various different ways in which things could unfold, based on different types of threats and risks, etc. I really welcome those conversations in the future to learn all we can from this experience.
Just to go back to my point here, we couldn't really have predicted that some businesses were going to stay open. In many respects, some of those decisions clearly were not within federal jurisdiction. We had provincial governments doing different things and doing them in a way that we couldn't. We weren't making those decisions. Sure, to some degree, we were providing some guidance and advice, but not always. Many of those decisions were made by provincial and territorial governments.
What I've heard in my community is that those really had impacts. The way that public health restrictions were rolled out and then rolled back, and how they were targeted to different industries and sectors, really had an impact on the different industries and sectors. Businesses were struggling with different scenarios. Again, how were we, as a federal government, supposed to understand that if we didn't take the time to prorogue, re-evaluate and listen to those stakeholders?
I find it hard to share in the perspective of some of my colleagues who seem to think that prorogation was not an appropriate or good use of time or was even for some other nefarious purpose. It just makes sense to me that you have to take time to re-evaluate. It's a lot of work to reflect and re-evaluate too. It's not easy. To learn and re-evaluate is not a holiday. It takes great commitment to ensure a good responsive government that is working for the people. It has to re-evaluate all the time. I would actually suggest that we probably need to re-evaluate constantly. I think we are, but perhaps there are ways to do that even better, too.
I'll get back to my argument here, which is that I've gathered some facts and figures from the hotel industry, as well, that I think are pretty important. These were collected in quarter three of 2020. The hotel industry or accommodations industry identified situational factors that I think we're all aware of that were really impacting them. Ongoing travel restrictions, obviously, were a big one that they identified. They also identified rising case counts, economic uncertainty, the Canada-U.S. border closure to non-essential travel, the reinstatement of gathering rules, the reopening rollbacks, the support program extensions. These were all situational factors. These were things they identified that were in the context they were dealing with.
I used to do strategic planning for organizations before getting into politics. With any organization, any large business, you would do a situational analysis—sometimes it was referred to as an environmental scan—before you developed a strategy. We did this work collectively, but I also did it with individual organizations. I think it's better to do it collectively, but it's more complex when you do it collectively because there are many different situational factors that are affecting different stakeholders within a system.
When you think about the complexity of doing this at a national scale with different levels of government, with many industries, with industry associations, with members of the public, with non-profit organizations, and the list goes on and on and on, just think about the complexity of how this virus has had ripple effects through our entire society. Just think about the challenges of different people, depending where you sit and stand in that system, and how what's relevant to you looks different depending on where you are. Again with those situational factors and that situational analysis, situational leadership depends upon that intelligence. Those are things that prorogation helped our government do. It helped it to stay attuned to those things, those factors and the differences of perspective out there. That, to me, is part of a responsible, responsive government.
You can't have good governance without being responsive. You can't. I mean, what does it even mean? What does good governance even mean if we're not listening to the various voices and stakeholders from across the country, especially in a 100-year public health crisis?
Again, we listened to the hotel industry. It had situational factors that it identified. The year-over-year change to occupancy for the accommodations industry in quarter one was down 10 points. In quarter two, it was down 49 points. That was when the pandemic hit. In July and August, it was still down 37 to 42 points. In quarter two, their revenues were down 82%. Basically, it started to get a bit better in July and August, but you can imagine that there was not a free-for-all. The pent-up demand—everybody wants to take a vacation, travel somewhere and stay in a hotel and—hadn't happened yet. In July and August 2020, we saw a moderate return of some revenues to the hotel industry, but they were very minor compared to what we saw in the retail industry.
Again, what I'm pointing to is the inequity of the impacts of the pandemic and the economic impact being greater—at least 10 times greater—than those of the previous recession in 2008-09.
Linking all this back for the sake of relevance, for my colleague Ms. Vecchio and others, these are all good reasons to have the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance testify before this committee and give us some testimony as to how she understood all of these various impacts at the time and how prorogation gave us the opportunity to re-evaluate some of our programs and eventually, I think, target more support for these industries. Some of that work is still ongoing, but lots of work has been done.
In particular, going back to the hotel industry....
Again, Madam Chair, I'm sorry for taking up so much time. I tend to be a bit verbose. Hopefully, as my political career continues, I may get more concise in the future. I struggle with this at times. I'll work on that.
Look, Madam Chair—