Thank you for your question.
Certainly, there have been a wide variety of programs that have been very beneficial to the tourism industry, with everything from the emergency wage subsidy, which has really allowed many businesses across the country to remain open and strive to be profitable, to what we've seen with the Canada emergency business account, of course, which has been a very helpful credit availability program, and also the commercial rent assistance.
The collection of all these programs is very much targeted at helping small and medium-sized enterprises, which form the vast bulk of the tourism industry, to survive those very lean months. The summer, as you said, had some bright spots, but for most businesses it still remained very difficult, because the capacity that accommodations and restaurants were able to achieve was severely limited by the need for social distancing.
As we look ahead, we can expect that the next four to five months will be extremely difficult for our industry. All our partners across the country are continuing to develop programs that will ensure a very strong restart, both domestically and internationally should borders reopen and our health authorities consider it safe to do so.
Certainly, for Atlantic Canada, there's been a lot of domestic activity, some of which has been strongly supported by federal programs, including Destination Canada. While I think there's almost nothing that could solve every problem our tourism industry is currently experiencing, this broad range of programs that have come from government in general have been very helpful. I think we are hopeful that we can survive these next few months and get a good start, if health conditions permit, come early spring.