All right. Thank you very much for noticing me sitting here.
I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak to the committee. As Mr. Davis just said, this has been a very long process. I don't understand these meetings in particular. You've had several of them now, with the common denominator being the same every time: help. Is it going to be the last one and then action is going to start, because it is needed drastically right now?
As far as the Oshawa Navy Club is concerned, we're closed again now, of course, but we do a lot of community service. We have a home for battered women in Oshawa called The Denise House. We have Simcoe Hall Settlement House. We look after our own veterans. We look after their families, as well, with pension advocates and things like that. We recently got some money for our past president that he didn't realize he even qualified for, and we used the Legion for that help.
In Oshawa, probably the same as other cities, we all work together. We have eight service clubs in Oshawa, and we all work together. There's no animosity between any of them. It's just very unfortunate that we've been put in this position now.
As Mr. Davis said, we have bills that have to be paid every month. Since this pandemic started, we've put out over $24,000 just to keep our building. We don't have a mortgage or anything, thankfully, but we still have heat, hydro and all the things you have to pay for regardless of whether you're open or not.
Last year, we lost over $16,000 in rentals that were cancelled when the pandemic started.
This program we are all speaking of today is very important to the bricks and mortar, as Mr. Davis said, and the other groups as well. Nobody should be ignored. Nobody should be overlooked.
If you don't think this is very important to our veterans—what our government should be doing—then take a survey in the Netherlands, France, Poland, Afghanistan, and ask the people over there whether we deserve this or not. I think you'll find that there are a lot of people right now watching to see what decisions are made here and what help you are going to give to our service clubs and our Legions. The time is now to do it. It was time to do it eight months ago, nine months ago.
We did get some help. It kept our doors open in July. We were destined to close permanently in July. That is something that's hit me very hard. Recently I helped to close the Peterborough Navy Club permanently. They gave us some of their history off the walls and stuff like that. We've lost one in Burlington, in Sarnia. Windsor, Ontario, is a huge naval town. They've lost their navy club.
This is very important to a lot of people. You guys can sit there and wonder what help you can do. Well monetarily, yes, everybody needs the monetary help, but you have to keep in mind something. With CERB, there was a lot of fraud in the CERB program. I would hate to see them write off the money for welfare recipients who received it, federal and provincial inmates who received it, other people, and not allow enough to come to the Legions and the service clubs. That will not only keep our doors open, but will help us through the next year.
Who knows how long this thing is going to go on? This could go on for another six months or more. To us, that's another $18,000 to $20,000 that we have to put out to be closed. We simply can't afford that.
I'm asking you on behalf of all veterans clubs, Legions and all the other service clubs, to do the right thing. Get this started, get it started now; get the program started. Don't make it so difficult with the paperwork to sign up for it. We shouldn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get something that we strongly believe we deserve. A lot of these men and women fought for their country, and now they're fighting for their existence again. I think that's very unfair that we have to fight again for our existence.
I served in Afghanistan as a civilian. I've seen our guys in action. I've seen some of the things that they've done. I have family members who served years ago. It's very important to me—it's personal to me—that these clubs stay open.
Any help that you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.