Industry committee  In the hotel business, labour is our largest expense after debt servicing. The continued increases spell trouble for us, especially when you have something funded at $57 billion. To continue increasing that doesn't make sense to us.

Industry committee  I'm a gentleman. Go ahead, Joyce.

Industry committee  Mr. Masse, we have major concern anytime prices go up for whatever reason. I have to say, though, that in eastern Canada, when the HST was brought in, I saw a lot of the debate that is taking place today. I also know that down east, notwithstanding some one-off items, the vast majority of hoteliers--who are in the real estate business, fundamentally, and you know that--will say that notwithstanding some items, they are supportive of an HST.

Industry committee  No.

Industry committee  Mr. Brown, the information I have from a director general over at CRA is that the full HST would be rebated. Do I have that in writing? No, but he told me that orally, and I've no reason to believe differently. I think that's very, very beneficial for our industry. It's a bonus and we look forward to seeing that happen.

Industry committee  It's funny, Michele and I were communicating via e-mail last week after the announcement came out and I said, “This is great. Now we have it, what do we do with it?”, which I believe, Mr. Brown, is your question. The fact is that we now need to work very closely with the inbound operators to be able to say, okay, who has their feet on the ground over in China?

Industry committee  Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to go over what my two colleagues just said about this, but in terms of being able to facilitate the process in our missions around the world, this also has an impact on, as I mentioned this earlier, the temporary foreign worker program wherein you have to process the individuals in these countries.

Industry committee  You have probably identified most of it. Travel and tourism is influenced by the economy. When the economy went into a tailspin, we went into a tailspin. Why? If you don't have a job, you don't take a holiday; and if you're a business, you ask whether you really need to take that trip.

Industry committee  It's interesting. I received an e-mail this morning, and I won't name the company it was from, but it's one of the largest hotel companies in the world. They have a famous granddaughter who got into trouble, so you can probably figure out the name of the company. He stated to me very clearly that this is going to look good for leisure business for the second, third, and fourth quarters of next year, so that's a good sign.

Industry committee  Similar to other bodies, no, we were not consulted. It came at us out of the blue. We do understand there were a variety of factors and considerations behind the decision. Yes, I have had individuals contact me and say it has had a direct impact, particularly tour operators and so forth.

Industry committee  Thank you very much. We appreciate the opportunity to once again appear before this committee. I usually like to start out by saying that we're the good news industry. We're in the hospitality business and we're pretty good at what we do. I very much appreciate the opportunity to be here with quite a few of my old friends.

Human Resources committee  At the end of the day, we believe very firmly that the balance will be offset in a very negative way. You identified the differences between Ontario and Quebec. We see the same thing right across the country in places where—depending upon the level of unionization and so forth.

Human Resources committee  Are we talking about what comes under this legislation, about the number of hotels that are federally regulated, or about the numbers that are unionized right across the board?

Human Resources committee  The portion that's unionized is about 60%.

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name's Tony Pollard. I'm president of the Hotel Association of Canada. As I said, we want to thank you for this opportunity to be here today. We're very strongly opposed to this bill, and right at the outset we recommend that it not go forward.