Madam Chair, the minister says we should vote for Bill C-2, but Bill C-2 does not help the independent travel advisers. He said the recovery has been uneven. Well, Bill C-2 is uneven and leaves a lot of people out in the cold, including independent travel advisers.
I would ask him whether the Liberals would amend Bill C-2 to help them, and also if they would amend Bill C-2 to help the start-ups. Many businesses were starting up just as this pandemic hit. People put in thousands of their own dollars in investments into new companies. They took out loans, signed leases and started businesses, many of them in the tourism and hospitality sector, just as this pandemic hit and they were immediately shut down.
These are restaurants, hotels or whatever, and these businesses have received no supports at all from the government throughout the pandemic because they did not have any business record to compare their losses to. They have plans and mechanisms they are asking the government to implement in Bill C-2, or however the government would do it, to give them some support.
They have struggled along and managed to survive in the face of competition with other companies that have received the supports they needed. They received the wage subsidy, but the start-ups received nothing. They are asking the government to let them access programs like HASCAP in such a way that they can continue on and survive, because they are hanging on by their fingernails.