Madam Speaker, the pandemic has devastated our economy. There is great convergence as to what needs to be done: We need to vaccinate Canadians, we need to reopen the economy, we need to get people back to work, we need to help struggling businesses get on their feet again and we need to plan to manage the long-term financial challenge that faces Canadians.
The Prime Minister said he was going to leave no one behind, but today's motion highlights the fact that many Canadians have been left behind. Why is that? It is very easy. For two years we have had no budget, no plan to reopen the economy, no plan to get Canadians back to work, no plan to support struggling businesses or help them get back on their feet, and no plan to manage the massive financial challenge facing future generations of Canadians. There is just a promise to spend, without explaining how, when, why or where the money will be spent. There is only how much. That is not enough. It is not a plan. What we need is a budget.
Canadians do not want to be dependent on the government. They want their jobs back. They want their businesses. They want their communities and their lives back. Is the Prime Minister listening? We are not asking him to reimagine what the economy might be or conduct a grand social or economic experiment. Canadians simply want to get back to normal. That means doing everything possible to support struggling businesses and reopen our economy. Despite the Prime Minister's promise, there is no plan to support the hardest-hit sectors of our economy.
Let me focus first on hospitality and tourism. Yesterday I met with the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. Their members reminded me that hospitality and tourism are among the most severely impacted sectors of our economy. Let us be clear what we are talking about. It is not just cruise ships. We are talking about hotels, motels, restaurants, bus lines, tourist-related retail, travel agents, the recreational fishing industry, outfitters and ski resorts. It goes on and on.
Prior to COVID-19, tourism was one of the fastest-growing industries in the world and it was our country's fifth-largest sector, but the pandemic has pitched that industry into a crisis. In fact, it is so bad that our tourism industry now employs half a million fewer Canadians than it did at this time last year. Tourism was the first hit industry. It was the hardest hit and it will be the last to recover.
The Prime Minister's response was empty promises, and no support has materialized. Instead, there are programs like HASCAP, the business credit availability program and the regional relief and recovery fund. These were so poorly designed that companies were either unable to access the programs or avoided them altogether because they did not meet their needs. As a result, many deserving business owners were unable to access these programs and are now struggling with insolvency. It is time to deliver the support they need to get that sector back on its feet.
Then there are the airlines. The motion calls on the government to support the hard-hit airline sector. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost in that sector. We are advocating for fully repayable loans, but not without conditions. We want the airlines to deliver consumer refunds to travellers who could not travel because of COVID, and to deliver job guarantees for their workers and restrictions on executive compensation until we are past the COVID crisis. We want them to restore the regional routes that have been closed down over the last few months, and we want them to refrain from clawing back travel agent commissions.
The Liberal government could also implement robust rapid testing at the airports, which took much too long to implement. We would love to see the gradual phase-out of the current 14-day-quarantine period through better rapid testing. The Liberal government has been promising support for Canada's airline industry for over a year and still there is nothing. To date, Canada is the only G7 country that has not supported its airlines.
Let us talk about charities. The Prime Minister also promised to support our charitable sector. We are talking about the Salvation Army, food banks, soup kitchens, free legal and dental clinics, homelessness programs, drug recovery programs and community organizations that enrich our lives, such as music, theatre, art and spiritual support. My hometown of Abbotsford is the most generous census metropolitan area in the whole country.
I understand how important this sector is to our economy and to filling the gaps where people would normally fall through the cracks. The charitable sector has been all but abandoned, unless one's name is Kielburger and leads the WE Charity, because Liberal insiders and friends of the Prime Minister have a direct line to the Prime Minister's Office. Almost $1 billion was paid to the WE Charity to set up a paid youth volunteer program. Let that settle in: a paid volunteer program. If one is in the WE Charity and one's name is Kielburger, that person gets access to almost $1 billion of taxpayers' money. If not, one is left behind. Charities are left out in the cold. Conservatives are calling upon the government to immediately table a budget that includes badly needed, sector-specific support for the devastated charitable sector.
I will provide a few thoughts on support for small business. Many of our small businesses are still falling through the cracks. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business estimates that by the time the COVID pandemic is done, we will have lost 240,000 small businesses, and it could be worse than that. Thirty-seven per cent of Canadian small businesses are losing money every day they are open. A quarter of them will run out of cash within the next three months, 56% have been negatively impacted by the second wave, and almost half are worried about the survival of their businesses. Where is the Liberal government? It has been missing in action.
Lending programs such as CEBA only help the smallest businesses. The large employer emergency financing facility is so expensive and poorly designed that companies are reluctant to use it. Other programs, such as HASCAP, are deeply flawed and new businesses that were started in 2020 do not even qualify for support. These are individuals who invested their life savings to start a new business and the government simply walked away from them and said they did not matter.
In summary, hospitality, tourism, airlines, charities and other small businesses have been left behind. This pandemic has exposed the Prime Minister's failure to lead and failure to deliver what he had promised: that no one would fall through the cracks. The evidence is clear that hundreds of thousands of Canadians' small businesses have, indeed, been left behind. We have spent the most per capita, yet have the highest unemployment rate in the G7. It is all traced back to the fact that there is no plan.
Conservatives have called upon the government, time and again, to table a budget and a plan for our future, to table a plan to reopen our economy, and none has been forthcoming. We are calling on the Prime Minister again to table a budget and include the support for hospitality, tourism, airlines, the charitable sector and small businesses that he has promised and to improve the design of the current programs.
Where is the plan? It is up to the Prime Minister to deliver it.
