Debates of Dec. 7th, 2020

(Return tabled)

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand at this time.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The house resumed consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—Measures to Support Canadian Businesses

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes. It is a great honour to speak to this opposition motion today.

When the world caught the news that multiple vaccines for COVID-19 had finally been approved, that this horrible year was finally about to come to an end, there was great relief and a sigh from across the world. That was until we realized that help was on the way for many of our close international partners including the U.K., U.S.A., Germany and Mexico and their economies might be able to reopen and their citizens would start to engage in normal life again, but Canada would have to wait. Granted, today's news was great. It is fantastic news that we will see the first vaccines coming to Canada, but certainly for our economy to re-engage we absolutely need to see far more, as soon as possible.

The government spent $44 million on upgrades to the National Research Council's Royalmount vaccine production facility in Montreal, and that is despite the Prime Minister saying that there would be no vaccine manufacturing in Canada. Unfortunately, the upgrades at that facility still are not finished and are not projected to be finished until 2021, so that really lagged our ability to produce vaccines and thus put us further behind many other countries.

Most people need some kind of certainty, and “as soon as possible” just does not work. With the variety of vaccines that have been announced and the contracts that the government has put in place, it seems entirely reasonable to ask, once they are approved, what the timing would be when Canadians can expect to see these vaccines, and to give the provinces the latitude to know what is coming down the pipe so they can start making arrangements for these vaccines that Canadians so desperately need to land at their pharmacies or to whatever execution method each of the provincial governments would use.

Our opposition motion today highlights the unequivocal fact that a lot of Canadian business owners are in distress and I am sure many of the members have heard this. Business owners need help just to survive while waiting until some form of rapid testing or a robust vaccination plan rolls out. They are really struggling.

Forty-six per cent of business owners are worried about the survival of their businesses. We hear a lot about essential services. For many of the business owners whom I speak to, their businesses are essential to them. They are essential for their livelihood. They are essential for them to look after their families and to generate incomes. It is essential for them that they get back to work. Some are working at reduced activity, and I really admire their ingenuity in trying to make the best of what is a very difficult situation.

As early as March, 56% of business owners said they had no more capacity to take on debt during this emergency. That is a phenomenal number, and even debt does not necessarily solve the problem. During the first wave, the government determined which were considered essential and non-essential businesses. Their businesses were absolutely essential for their livelihoods. A lot of large corporations, such as Costco and Walmart, would still be able to benefit and sell products that a lot of small businesses sell as well, so the small business owners really want to get back to work.

A simple fact is that there will be no recovery if there are no businesses left, so the government has handed out about $240 billion in the first eight months of the pandemic. Not to say that we should not have been spending money, but that is about $952 million a day between March 13 and November 20.

While the government members had been starting to talk about their great reset stimulation and other singular-driven goals, we are spending virtually more than any other country in the G7, but we have the highest unemployment, so it is obvious that some of these programs are not working for their intended people. The Liberals have been stingy in regard to spending on what Canadians need, but what people really want is to get back to work and earn a paycheque.

The federal government must support employment by removing barriers to job creation, such as taxes and regulation. This is something that we could do that does not cost anything and creates that opportunity for businesses, particularly around interprovincial trade barriers.

The government needs to fix the large employer emergency financing facility, the LEEFF program, by reducing restrictions and amending the interest rate schedule. As of today, there are only a couple of companies that actually have used this particular program that the government has put forth. It strikes me that it would be time to fix this, do something with it and make sure that it is more accessible for companies.

Postponing the increase of the Canada pension plan payroll tax plan for January 1 again is a tax burden on businesses that they just cannot afford. They are not in a position to increase their input costs and, quite frankly, they have nowhere to pass it on. Postponing the increase of the carbon tax and the alcohol escalator tax plan for 2021 is not to say that we should not have the increase, it is just that these small businesses cannot have this kind of input cost in their businesses at this time.

The motion also calls for complete details on the highly affected sectors credit availability program by December 16, including criteria when the businesses can apply, when the sectors are eligible and when repayment will be required. Giving details like this should not be a battle. The government often announces these programs, but with details to follow. I can say from what I hear from businesses that they want certainty. These plans are clear as mud, there is a bunch of smoke and mirrors and the Canadian public needs to know.

We have the hangover. Kevin Page, who served as the PBO for five years, says he can hardly make sense of the 223-page fall economic update, saying after spending an evening going through the charts and all the verbiage, he had difficulty even understanding where it is at. We cannot sit idly while the rest of the world recovers. We cannot sit by while the world starts to move along. We need a plan. We need a timeline. We need to understand when vaccines are going to arrive and when we are going to be able to get back to business.

Ultimately, we know that the long-term cure for the ailing economy cannot be sustained by government programs no matter how many are provided to help small business. Whether the government wants to believe it or not, the debt we are accumulating, in excess of $1.1 trillion, will be unsustainable. If we continue along this path, we will effectively ruin any chance for future generations, our children and grandchildren, from realizing the immense possibility that once lay before us when we were their age.

We need a plan that will unleash private sector companies. Let them get back to work and create jobs. The investment plan that the government talks about I hope is in assets that will help improve productivity and our export potential. Canada, at the end of the day, is a relatively small country that has enormous potential and resources and it needs to be able to sell to other people in the world. There is a tremendous opportunity to unlock the IP that many companies in this country have and put policies in place that would support that export capacity. Handouts are not the answer. All of the businesses I talk to want to be able to execute their plans, but they want the government to put policies in place that encourage them to invest and do not stop them from investing.

We need to recognize and support our strategic sectors, allow them to grow and make sure we understand what our strategic advantage is. As nice as it would be to rely solely on ourselves for economic growth, the hard reality is that in order to flourish economically, limiting our recovery efforts by internal selling, selling to ourselves, will never get us out of this hole. We need to get focused on what we can do to make sure we can get people back to work and create an environment where Canadian companies are competitive and able to sell their goods and services all over the world. That is what they want to do, that is what they want to focus on and that is what we need the government to get focused on.

The vision of growth and prosperity after this pandemic must include a recovery for all. It has never been more important than now. It is important for creating opportunities for Canada's youth now and in the future instead of burdening them before they even have a fighting chance.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have heard a number of Conservatives talk a lot over the last several weeks about the unemployment rate in Canada. That seems to be one of the economic factors of the pandemic that they seem to want to talk about. The member brought it up, too. They always talk about how high it is. In reality, if we look at the numbers, we are less than half a point higher than the United States in terms of our unemployment rate, yet we have one-third of the death rate per capita in the United States.

My question to the member is very easy and very specific. Does he think that having an increased unemployment rate of less than .5% is a good trade-off for having a death rate that is one-third of what we are seeing in the United States?

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, that would suggest there is a direct correlation between the programs that are put in place and what the provinces are doing to try to limit the spread of this horrible health crisis. I acknowledge that we have a significant issue with the health crisis.

However, the point I was trying to make to the member was that we should do a comparative of the programs we put in place and the amount of money we are spending versus the unemployment rate, and then compare that to other countries. Other countries actually have results that are comparable, if not better, than ours when it relates to illness during the pandemic. It still strikes me that these programs could be more efficient and more effective, and that we could get more people back to work while keeping them safe.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, the member made reference to our needing a plan. He said that we need to be focused and we have to get people back to work. Those are the words the member was using. I would say to him that this has been the case.

Let us stop and think about it. What do people think the wage subsidy program is about? That has protected jobs that may have been lost if the government did not provide the wage subsidy. The same thing applies in terms of the rent subsidy program. Here we are protecting our businesses and our workers so that, when we get past the coronavirus, we are better able to get the economy going quicker.

Would the member not agree that is, at least in part, a plan?

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, in fact we have supported many of the programs that the member talks about. The reason we have supported them is that we realized that, when the government shuts down the economy, there has to be a reaction to that.

What the member missed from what I was saying was that there is a lack of certainty and a plan for how we will start to move out of this. The government announced 100 billion dollars' worth of potential stimulus spending with no details or concrete plan. Businesses need to understand the strategy, how we are going to grow our exports and how we are going to grow our economy. The time is now. It is not to wait another six months and then start to develop it. The time is now.

We should get moving and we should see a budget so that we can better understand where the government is going and in what direction it expects to go forward.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, we agree with the preamble of the motion, which states that businesses are the first to be affected by the pandemic.

I am thinking of the Val-Jalbert historical village, which is in my riding and cannot access the wage subsidy. That is completely unfair. We have been working with different departments, but they have been passing the buck for several months. We hope to find a solution that will make this site retroactively eligible for the wage subsidy. That is the kind of action we can take to help our businesses.

However, the Conservative motion talks about putting the brakes on the carbon tax for the time being. Does my hon. colleague believe that this opens the door to the possibility of permanently cancelling this tax? Is that what the Conservatives want?

[James Cumming, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, the reason the carbon tax is an issue at this point in time is that businesses can sorely afford to have added input costs into the production of their goods and services. That is the issue. This is not a discussion around the environment. It is purely that they cannot afford it. If the member looked at the statistics I mentioned earlier in my remarks, many are going to fail. One thing they cannot afford is added taxes and burdens going into the future.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to join the debate today. I am joining from Brockville, Ontario.

We are discussing a very important matter. The measures that are proposed in our opposition day motion have been mentioned by the previous speakers and my colleagues, and they are incredibly important. The reason they are important is that we are hearing from businesses about the growing uncertainty that we have moving into 2021.

The year 2020 has been unprecedented, and it has required the government to move fast. The current government has enjoyed unprecedented support from the official opposition. There was, perhaps, a risk at some point this year that we might have to change the name of the official opposition, because we unanimously agreed to so much of what the government put forward so that we could quickly help Canadians.

However, in that process we also proposed a number of changes to the proposed legislation that we believe would have been of better service to Canadians and to businesses. In some cases, they were not adopted by the government, and in other cases they were. An example of the types of proposals we made that we now know, at the first introduction by the government, would have been helpful to Canadians writ large is the CERB back to work bonus, which we proposed as one measure. Of course, giving Canadians the opportunity to earn beyond the lowest threshold, while getting them back to work and allowing businesses to continue to operate, would have been immensely helpful to businesses.

The same is true of the first iteration of the emergency wage subsidy. It was originally proposed at 10%, but requests by the opposition for that amount to be raised to 75% has likely had the greatest effect on businesses and Canadians' livelihoods and lives from coast to coast to coast. I hear from my constituents that the 75% number has been the difference. Not every business has been able to access that program, but this is the type of program that was responsive to the calls of business groups and independent businesses. I am very pleased that was one change the government made.

The Canada emergency commercial rent assistance program was quite flawed and underutilized in its initial iteration. Businesses were frustrated by that. The relaunch of that, following the suggestions and the intervention of the opposition, resulted in a program that will hopefully be able to allow more businesses to stay open and to keep the lights on, but for many that assistance will come too late.

When we are moving so quickly on all of these programs, and speed was a necessity in 2020 to help address these gaps, some of the mistakes that were made were made while there were better options and other perspectives at the table. We had questions around the emergency rent assistance program and how it ended up with CMHC as its administrator, and questions around connections and conflicts of interest, when it had been proposed, at the time, that the CRA ought to be able to administer the program.

The same is true with the now famous and scandal-plagued summer employment program proposed by the government. It was widely panned by folks who work in that industry. At the same time, Conservatives were calling for more funds to be invested in the Canada summer jobs program, which is a successful program.

While we were moving quickly, the government, in a few instances, looked like it wanted to reinvent the wheel, instead of investing, with the support of the opposition, in existing programs and leveraging Canada's public service, which was able to ultimately, in the end, deliver on those programs anyway.

At the beginning of the pandemic there was concern among opposition parties and Canadians when there was a proposal by the government to be able to tax and spend without parliamentary oversight. We could only look to the government's better angels and imagine it wanted to move quickly and was worried that it would not have opposition support; however, the government continued to enjoy opposition support after we were able to draw the attention of Canadians to that troubling matter.

I raise that issue because we find ourselves now at the end of the year, in December. It is hard to believe it is December. We had an opportunity this summer, when the official opposition, the Conservative opposition, called for the House to continue to meet throughout the summer in a hybrid format, as it is meeting today, to deal not just with COVID-related measures but with the business of the House. I have heard concerns from government members about the opposition slowing down legislation, when in fact the opposition proposed that the government continue to operate and meet throughout the summer.

At the end of the summer, and the four days that we ended up having for these special sittings of the House, Parliament was prorogued for six weeks. During those six weeks, let alone the summer period, there would have been all kinds of time for the finance, government operations or other committees to review the spending to date and the planned spending going forward. That is not what we saw. That gives my colleagues and me pause. Canadians wonder who is keeping an eye on the register while all this is going on.

Once we did come back, following prorogation, we had a more than 30-hour filibuster at the finance committee with respect to a question of privilege. This was not an ideological difference between members. This was very much a procedural issue that bogged down a committee that should have been doing a lot of heavy lifting during the pandemic, when businesses and individuals were looking for real support from the government and looking for Canada's parliamentarians to do the heavy lifting.

We know rapid testing would have been a real boon to businesses and to the economy, to be able to bolster testing efforts and to track and trace COVID-19 throughout this year. We were slow. As a country, we were slow to get those tests out to the provinces. Today, we heard good news. There is going to be a very limited release of COVID vaccine in Canada, but Canadians wonder what the timetable looks like for next year. When are they going to be vaccinated? Who is going to be vaccinated first? How are those vaccines going to be administered? We are looking for a plan from the government on those measures.

While we are expecting the government to be able to deliver in response specifically to the pandemic with things like rapid testing and vaccine distribution, we are also looking for it to turn its eye to the small businesses that have had an incredibly difficult year, an unparalleled year with respect to how bad it was. We need the government to take a look at planned tax increases for small businesses, hit the pause button, let people catch their breath and let businesses start to earn in what we hope to see in 2021: a return to normal, as vaccines roll out and we better understand COVID-19.

This is really the nature of what we are looking for regarding this opposition day motion. When we look at increases to CPP, the carbon tax and planned escalator taxes, businesses want to see a signal from the government that Canada's Parliament has their backs. Canada's official opposition, the Conservatives, want to let businesses know we do have their backs and we are looking for all members in the House to join us in sending that very important signal to Canadian businesses.

With that, I believe my time is running out. I am thankful for the opportunity, and I look forward to taking questions from colleagues.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my neighbour to the east for his intervention today. I am just a bit farther down the 401 than him, but we are both very fortunate to share a part of Ontario that attracts a lot of tourism and brings a lot of people from around the world to both of our areas.

I mention that because he discussed a number of the programs the government has set up, but one thing I did not hear him talk about, and I apologize if I missed it, was the regional relief recovery fund. This was the $1.5 billion fund to support businesses. It is so important because it really supported a lot of local tourism businesses, with 25% of the funds going to local tourism. It helped secure over 100,000 jobs. I wonder if the member can comment on what he thinks of this fund and the fact that, in the fall economic statement, there was a commitment to increase that by half a billion dollars.

Does he see that as a win for his riding, my riding and other ridings that support tourism?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Madam Speaker, what businesses want are details, as I said early on. I did not give an exhaustive list of the programs that were introduced this year. Some of them have been helpful and some of them held promise, but were introduced too late or with details that were light. Of the ones that have helped businesses, I have heard thanks and requests for more from constituents and businesses here, but we need to have a plan going forward and to have that legislation in place before the new year.

We have heard a few times this past year that legislation arrives on the eve of the expiry of a program and the government is looking for unanimous consent of the House to pass it. It does not give us the opportunity to give that oversight and does not give us the opportunity to hear from stakeholders to allow local businesses, such as here in the Thousand Islands region, to give their input to committee. That is what we are looking for: more details and more of a plan.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, my question is regarding some of the supports we have had for small businesses. In my riding of Edmonton Strathcona, a number of small businesses have really suffered because they were not able to access the rent subsidy program. Like the member said, the program was improved and made much better in the second iteration, but it did not help those who needed the help going back to the beginning of the pandemic.

Would the member agree it would be appropriate to backdate the rent relief program for small businesses to the beginning of the pandemic?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Madam Speaker, thanks very much to the member for Edmonton Strathcona for the question. I know the city well, having lived there when I served in the Canadian Armed Forces. This speaks to the speed at which programs have rolled out. In the beginning, the Conservative opposition was looking for more direct support in terms of returning GST remittances from the government right back into businesses' pockets to allow them to prepare for the storm.

Now that we are through the first part of the storm, maybe through the eye of it, and we are into the second wave, we need to see from the government a concrete plan and costing. We need to know what it has in store. More taxes are not going to help businesses even before we look at backdating programs that are already in place.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, not to be a spoilsport, because I am not that kind of person, but there is something I am having trouble understanding about the Conservatives' desire to opt out of the carbon tax.

A time of recovery is usually an opportunity to make transitions. The government announced that it intends to pursue a slightly greener recovery. I do not see how abolishing the carbon tax would support the economy. I think that the only winners would be the oil and gas industry. That seems to me to be a provision tailored to the oil and gas industry.

I would like my colleague to tell me something. Who besides the oil and gas industry would benefit from postponing the carbon tax?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member has 10 seconds.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Madam Speaker, in my riding, farmers and people who have to travel long distances do not have the benefit of public transit. They would all benefit from freezing the carbon tax. The abolition of the carbon tax is not specifically proposed in this motion, but I must say, a strong Canadian natural resource sector is good for the whole world. We have the best resource extraction and we produce the cleanest oil—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am speaking to the House from my home, a little farther down the 401 than the last member, from Kingston and the Islands.

Before I go any further, I want to thank all the people behind the scenes, who are making this hybrid session of Parliament possible, for their incredible work. I was thinking of this as I was sitting here watching them control this Zoom meeting. The fact that so many people are contributing to making this work really says something about the incredibly dedicated people on Parliament Hill on and off site who are assisting with this.

Today I will be sharing my time with the member for Brampton North.

I will touch on my position on this opposition motion as best I can, and give some insight as to why I am not supporting it. This probably does not come as a surprise to members as it seems as though, based on what I have been hearing today, none of the parties other than the one that moved the motion will be supporting it.

In particular, I have trouble with two clauses toward the end of the motion. The first was postponing the increase of the Canada pension plan adjustments. For starters, just because there is a pandemic right now does not mean people suddenly do not have to plan for their retirement anymore, and that the government does not have to play a role in that. I would argue that now, more than ever, people have anxieties surfacing about how they are going to be retiring and whether there is going to be security there for them.

Especially in the economy we live in right now, where there are more precarious workers and more people are moving between jobs throughout their careers, we need to make sure they are properly taken care of. A strong, robust Canada pension plan is the way to do that as we continue to move through the changes our economy is facing, so I have an issue with that.

The next issue, and I have risen in the House on a number of occasions to speak of it, is specifically with respect to the carbon tax, as the Conservatives like to call it. I have said many times in the past that it is not a tax, because all of the money is returned to people. It is a market mechanism: a way to incentivize the market to make certain choices. I am always baffled by the fact that Conservatives do not get this. They have always claimed to be the champions of economic policy, and that they would know better than anybody if that was the case, which I think more people are questioning now than ever before. They would know, if that was the case, that incentivizing the market by putting tools in there to help people make choices is the only thing in a free and open market that can actually have a good lasting impact on that market.

That is why the government never chose to use the opportunity to tax. A tax would take that money, put it into general revenues and utilize it for other purposes. Instead, this is a tool to collect money and then redistribute that money back out, in particular benefiting those who are having the least environmental impact possible. Of course, that takes time. These things take time to change, but at the same time we will see the price on that continually increase. Rather than happen all at once, it was scheduled to slowly be ramped up so it could have that impact in the marketplace to encourage and incentivize consumers in the market to make different choices.

Because this motion completely talks about government support of small businesses, it is appropriate to discuss the plans that have been put in place: the various programs that the government has set up and executed over the last several months that have supported small businesses. I would start this discussion by referring back to the fall economic statement.

In a question to the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, I asked about tourism, which came up in the fall economic statement. I asked specifically about support for the tourism sector, which has been hit really hard during this pandemic. Tourism represents a large part of the economic activity in my riding, as is the case in his riding, and no doubt we have seen a tremendous impact given the way the pandemic has affected small businesses in the Kingston area.

That is why I was pleased with the government's regional relief and recovery fund. It is $1.5 billion specifically to support businesses that were unable to access other federal pandemic support programs. It has supported over 100,000 jobs and 14,700 businesses, but had a really important impact on the local tourism sectors in my community of Kingston and the Islands. To date, it has provided $202 million in support to more than 2,800 tourism-related businesses.

I was very happy to see, in the fall economic update, the Minister of Finance commit an additional half a billion dollars to this particular fund. These are the businesses that are going to be impacted by this pandemic the longest, in my opinion. Tourism, unlike some other sectors, will not immediately start up again in the strong state it left off. That is because there is going to be a lot of concern among people who are looking to travel. I do not think the confidence right after the pandemic will be as high as it was before the pandemic, and there will be less desire to immediately get on a plane and go to other parts of the world.

This sector, therefore, is going to be hit longer than some other sectors that might be able to bounce back relatively quickly, and this additional half a billion dollars really gives the opportunity to make sure everyone is taken care of for the long term. There are a number of other programs as well.

One thing I like to do often when I am speaking, because I think that sometimes we can get lost in the details of only talking about what is going on in Canada, is to compare Canada with some of the other countries in the world. That is what I want to do for the last two minutes I have today.

According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business's October 2020 survey, 66% of Canadian businesses are fully open and 3% are fully closed because of the pandemic. This was as of September 20. I raise this because I want to compare it with what is going on in the United States, where 100,000 businesses have fully closed. About 60% of businesses that have shut down in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic will not be reopening. Canada, to date, has recovered 80.9% of the jobs that were lost between February and April, versus only 60% in the United States.

Those two stats show Canada's performance throughout the pandemic, and based on the supports from various levels of government, Canada's response, comparatively speaking, has been stronger.

I will not stop at the United States. I would also like to reference the United Kingdom very quickly.

The U.K. government has a program called the job retention scheme, which is equivalent to the Canada emergency wage subsidy. Just for comparison purposes, as of November 5, it had spent 43 billion pounds, which is roughly $73 billion Canadian, and we had spent $50 billion Canadian. We have spent about $23 billion less than the U.K., but it has double our population.

When we look at the amount of money that has been spent by the federal government specifically on businesses, I would argue that this government has had a robust plan to support businesses throughout the entire pandemic. I have no doubt, and I have the greatest degree of confidence, that we will be there right through to the other side of this so that we can come back in a much stronger position than we would have been had we not helped out Canadians and small businesses.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, I am glad tourism in the member's area is doing so well. While he was giving his speech, I got a text from the CEO of Tourism Saskatoon asking for an urgent meeting with me. Things are not going well in Saskatoon. It lost the Junos, which was a $9-million hit, on March 15, and it has never recovered from that.

The hon. member talked about how well things are going in his riding, but that is not the case all over this country. Saskatoon is one place that I can tell him is in deep financial trouble right now and may never recover from it.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not think the member was listening to me. I did not say the tourism sector in my riding was doing well. I said the tourism sector represented a lot of the economic activity in my riding and, in fact, is being hit extremely hard by the pandemic. I also said the government has invested so much in supporting the sector and continues to do so, as indicated in the fall economic statement.

I encourage him to reach out to the economic adviser or the chamber of commerce that reached out to him and report back the good news that the federal government is going to continue to be there for tourism and has just recently announced in the fall economic statement an additional $500 million to support this sector through the pandemic.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Kingston and the Islands for his speech.

I really liked some of the words that he repeated several times, including the word “tourism”. I am the proud Bloc Québécois critic for tourism, and I think that I have a good handle on the file.

I think that $500 million for tourism across Canada is peanuts for an industry that has been hard hit since the beginning of the crisis and was subject to the lockdown. It will take a lot of time for this industry to recover because, as we know, it will still be some time before we have a vaccine. That means it will be difficult for people to stay in hotels and attend events, so it will be difficult for the tourism industry to recover.

The Alliance de l'industrie touristique du Québec asked for two things before the economic update, and I was even able to ask the government representatives in the House about them. Those two things are an additional extension of the Canada emergency wage subsidy and assistance for fixed costs to free up more cash flow.

In April, the Deputy Prime Minister, who is now also the Minister of Finance, announced that the government was committed to increasing liquidity support, but nothing has been done to date.

The only announcement the government made for the tourism industry in the economic update was that it will now provide 100% government-guaranteed financing for businesses. There are limits to what it is willing to do for the tourism industry, and what it is doing is not enough.

Does my colleague really think that he is going to help the tourism industry by letting it go further into debt?