Finance committee  We're deeply concerned with the availability of labour in this country. We're in this middle ground right now where we don't have enough demand to be attracting and rehiring as many people as we possibly can, so we're trying to hang onto as many employees as possible. Those empl

Finance committee  There are 300,000.

Finance committee  Sixty per cent of our workforce was lost in those early months, when we had a total shutdown. We have been trying to hire back as many of those people as possible, but it is unclear in this environment today how many have been lost permanently. We know that many have transferred

Finance committee  I do have those numbers. What I'd like to do is follow up with, committee, if I can, on the very specifics of which percentage was hired back into our sector. What I can tell you is that we did not see the kind of recovery we needed to see. We did not get to hire back as many wor

Finance committee  The downtown cores were disproportionately hard hit. Across the board, revenues were down between 50% and 100% over the course of COVID, up until the last couple of months. It is across the board, but there is an acute challenge in the urban cores where, this summer, we did not h

Finance committee  We'll see a collapse in this sector. Using the hotel sector as an example, according to that survey, we could see up to 60% of the hotels in this country close permanently. They will not be able to cover the bills. They are running a loss every single month in most regions and in

Finance committee  Yes. Canada is not really open for business today. It is very difficult to get into Canada. The PCR test is a barrier and, of course, now we hear talk of more restrictions coming into place. I want to be clear though. We are all sensitive to the fact that this is a health crisi

Finance committee  Yes, that trend is accurate. I also have seen that from Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada also has another interesting stat. It suggests that 80% of Canada's future workforce needs to come from immigration, so we will be putting a proposal to government for how we build back

Finance committee  Absolutely. We need to keep the businesses intact, and we need to maintain as many of those employee-employer relationships as we can, because if we don't have our employees by the time we need to recover, then we will not be in a position to recover. We need both. They go hand i

Finance committee  That is correct.

Finance committee  That's a great question. I would support whatever it takes to ensure that the tourism and hospitality recovery program can pass without delay before Christmas.

Finance committee  We simply wouldn't have an industry standing today. We would have lost the anchor businesses in this sector. Here I'm talking about the hotels, the convention centres and the attractions. We would have lost hundreds of thousands of tourism operators who provide those Canadian exp

Finance committee  I think if you look at the economy as a whole, there are sectors of the economy that are building back. I think when the government in the budget looked at when to wind down these support programs, there was some logic to doing it at the beginning of the summer, and then it was e

Finance committee  Sure. Thank you for the question. The labour challenges that our sector was facing, even before the pandemic, were reaching the point of crisis. This is because demand to visit Canada and regions like yours.... Canada has become one of the most desirable places in the world to v

Finance committee  It's my pleasure, and we do hope for that extension. Thank you.