Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm a little bit taken aback by some of the questioning that's taken place here this afternoon.
I'll give a quick example with regard to duty-free stores. These are small businesses. Even during the pandemic, they came forward with solutions for what was taking place. In fact, they actually asked to donate their perishable goods to charities, but the government wouldn't provide a change to allow them to do that, so those goods rotted.
They didn't come here to say that ArriveCAN destroyed or had implications on their businesses. They came here by invitation to show that it's another barrier that was still in the repertoire of problems that they face on the border and that it needs to be adjusted.
Yes, now that it's actually optional, people can use it if they want. They may not want to. I get the point that you're making, Mr. Lovegrove, with regard to when they go to the app. I've heard this from the Americans I deal with on a regular basis. Mr. Maloney is correct that it is on the website, but it's pretty shocking when you're on your personal phone and you read about the fines and the penalties and all those different things. They haven't necessarily gone through those things, so sometimes it's the tone of things that's out there.
What didn't happen with regard to this is is that there weren't any education programs. When the western hemisphere travel initiative came in, you remember, Madam Chair, all the times we went to the United States to push. Then there was actually advertising that went out to the United States and so forth.
I'll conclude by saying that I want to thank the witnesses and all my colleagues here. Perhaps if we can get in front of some of these things a little bit better, it would be much more helpful. That's where I think I want to go with this study. It's to see how we can ameliorate the damage that's taken place and go forward from there.
I will conclude by saying that with regard to duty-free stores, again, I never heard any complaints. The border was shut down. These organizations are not generally run by big businesses. The Ambassador Bridge runs one of them, and the Taqtaq family, a local family, runs the other one. Almost all the other ones are family businesses. It's not a big multinational conglomerate that owns them all. They have been suffering more than any other businesses because their customers were shut off. They couldn't actually get there. This is one of the things we need to ameliorate, because if we're going to have recovery, we need them back in the game.
Thank you, Madam Chair.