Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about a key issue that's facing Canada's $63-billion restaurant industry, with its one-million-plus employees, and that's the labour shortage. In our most recent restaurant outlook survey, for the first quarter of 2012, 31% of restaurant respondents said that a shortage of skilled labour is having a negative effect on their businesses, and 14% said that a shortage of unskilled labour is having a negative effect on their businesses.
The labour shortage reached crisis proportions for our members in western Canada in the middle of the last decade. The economic downturn provided a reprieve, but our members are again having difficulty hiring workers in different parts of the country, particularly in smaller communities in western Canada. But in the balance of the country, it is a growing problem that will get progressively worse over time.