Thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity to once again appear before this committee.
I usually like to start out by saying that we're the good news industry. We're in the hospitality business and we're pretty good at what we do. I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here with quite a few of my old friends.
To give you a little bit of a feeling for the size of the lodging industry in Canada, last year we did $18.8 billion worth of revenue. The value added by our industry is $17.8 billion. We employed--we're down this year, obviously--about 378,000 people from every riding right across the country. One of the reasons I say we're the good news industry is that we generated about $7.5 billion worth of revenue in taxes for the government last year, of which about $3.3 billion went to the federal government.
Much as my colleague from the Canadian Tourism Commission did, I want to commend the government for the agreement on ADS with China. We've been looking for this for a long time. In fact, about three or four years ago I wrote a booklet called “Canadian Hospitality for Chinese Guests” in anticipation of it.
I also want to recognize some of our friends around the table who I know have been really pushing this forward in a big way. I know my hotelier friend, member of Parliament Gord Brown, has been pushing that. Mike Lake was doing it. Navdeep, I know when you and I were together about a month ago, we were talking about the same thing. Brian, I know you've been pushing it as well. So it's good to finally make it happen.
It's been a tumultuous year for us. Our occupancies in Canada--how we measure hotels--were down from about 63% to about 58%. From February to September of this year, we lost $625 million right off the top. We're like the airline industry. We offer a perishable product; if we don't sell it tonight, it's gone forever. It's not like we're selling computers or something like that. Yes, we're down in a big way. At the same time, Michele referenced the travel deficit, which is now upwards of about $14 billion. As far as our visitation from the States goes, we're fundamentally at about half of where we've been since 2001.
Having said all of that, though, we are starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. We do see some of the group bookings for next year with business people travelling. The third and fourth quarters of next year are starting to come back. I like to give credit where credit is due, and the economic stimulus package is working in many parts of the country, and it's good for the hotel people. We're grateful for that, and I want to be on record as saying that.
At the same time, in the budget last year, the feds put in $40 million for tourism promotion, $150 million for the parks, and $100 million for the marquee tourism events program. When the announcement, the RFP from Diane Ablonczy, came out last week saying that we should get the message out to hoteliers and that they had until January 10 to go out and promote their events around the country, I made sure that got into every hotelier's hands so we can take advantage of some of the bucks out there and really make things happen.
Having said that, though, I wanted to talk a little bit about promotion and what we need to do. Yes, we like the promotion moneys that were put out last year, but we need to have these on a consistent, regular basis, so my friends at the Canadian Tourism Commission, as well as hoteliers, are able to go out and say, “Okay, we know what we have in the budget” instead of just having it go up one year and down another. We need to have that sustainable funding on a regular basis.
I want to talk just a little tiny bit about the airline industry.
We very much support liberalized air agreements around the world. I've been in with my friends at TIAC, from whom you're going to be hearing shortly, and the reality is that the airport rent situation at Toronto Airport in particular just does not make sense at all. It doesn't matter who you are or what you're doing. We met with John Baird two or three weeks ago, and--how can we put it, Chris?--he sort of rolled his eyes a little bit and let it go at that.
However, we did raise with him the fact--and I think Monsieur Garneau would appreciate this in particular--that the City of Plattsburg, in their airport now, is promoting itself as Montreal Airport South. We now have two and a half million Canadians travelling to the United States, particularly Plattsburgh, Syracuse, Buffalo, Grand Forks, and Seattle, to get flights out. Why? It's because our airport system in Canada is just too expensive. Two and a half million people is a lot of people. When we raised that with Mr. Baird, he said, and I quote, “Yes, it is embarrassing.” He said that himself.
The air travellers security charge, we firmly believe, is a service that the federal government provides. It should not be something that has collected $2.3 billion from 2002 to 2008. It's ridiculous.
We would like to see the aviation fuel excise tax eliminated, as some of the provinces have done.
What I would like to do at the very end of this, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, is state that even though our numbers are down in the hotel business, even though we are not experiencing the shortages of employment that we had a couple of years ago, you can rest assured that in two or three years, as the economy recovers, we will once again have shortages. I very much encourage the government and all members to support the temporary foreign workers program, because without it.... I was just talking to a hotelier today from Lake Louise. He said to me, “Tony, when you appear before the committee, will you please reinforce how that is critical?” Even though the numbers right now, yes, are down, it's going to come back and we aren't going to be able to have the service levels. I know that for my friend Joyce Reynolds at the CRFA, it's the same thing. So please, let's make sure we maintain that.
Chairman, I've probably gone on too long. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much to all the members.