Finance committee  Again, because of the complexity of the different levels of legislation and policy, the inequity cannot necessarily be corrected by just one entity. As an example, we have a member who owns hotel chain. He moved a wall in his business. When other inspectors from different departments came in to inspect that, it required drawings.

Finance committee  Again, our members wouldn't necessarily be renting rooms in their house unless they're a B and B.

Finance committee  I would suspect that for many of the rural B and Bs it would be $30,000 or below, but again, that is not the significant number of our membership. The ones who are really feeling the pressure would be the people in the major centres—

Finance committee  —Corner Brook, Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor, places like that. That's not to say that rural areas are not feeling the pressure of the sharing economy or whatever the appropriate term is for that now, because it seems to be beyond the sharing economy. If you're the one operator in a rural community and you have competition across the road, that's pretty significant, but where we see those aggregated numbers would be in the major centres.

Finance committee  Unfortunately, we don't have the same level of research as Mr. Kaiser would have. In the study he cited, the data was from 11 major centres in Canada. St. John's, Newfoundland, was not one of those. I think Halifax was, probably. The only real information we would have is what we can gather on our own, and that fluctuates by the day.

Finance committee  These are fairly complex questions that professionals need to get to the bottom of and there are different opinions on that. A tourism operator is not necessarily a tax professional. I think that once they fully understand and see how these things are going to affect them we'll probably hear more feedback then.

Finance committee  I would say up because of the complexity of the industry and the different pieces of legislation, and indeed, we do find many of our operators are hampered because of the complexity of those requirements. The inequitable part of the sharing economy is that there is somebody operating next door who has none of those and I think that's a fundamental gripe that our members would have.

Finance committee  I think that's a good point. I referenced Airbnb because this is a very new topic and hard research is hard to come by. Things are evolving. Toronto is just releasing things and Quebec just introduced new legislation, but this report by the Hotel Association of Canada was actually something concrete that we could refer back to.

Finance committee  We would say yes.

Finance committee  We have about 2,600 tourism operators in the province. The big chains you'll see in the major centres, but then it goes down to smaller independent hotels. Certainly the vast majority would be small mom-and-pop operations.

Finance committee  As your colleague mentioned earlier around legislation, part of the problem we're finding as we work through this is that there is no one real piece of legislation that affects every piece of operation that an operator has. In a hotel you're dealing with not only the tourism licensing legislation, but you also deal with a liquor board, you also deal with workers' compensation, and you deal with municipal legislation.

Finance committee  We have, but again, much of the time we had for consultation was high season so many people still had their heads down and were busy doing their work. Like your mom and other small business operators, they're not going to fully understand the impact of any of this until their tax accountant or tax professional really brings it to them.

Finance committee  Definitely, timing was an issue, for sure.

Finance committee  My comments about long-term sustainable funding were in particular around Marine Atlantic. It may take me a minute to put together my laundry list of things where I see opportunity. In preparing for this submission we looked at four main points that would help grow the industry.

Finance committee  I think 60 days is probably high season in Newfoundland and Labrador and that would really put you in the business. Our members are comfortable with home sharing and the sharing economy. When it becomes unfair and borders direct competition, we have an issue. You're right. Legislation is being drafted in different parts of the world to deal with this and we're struggling here to find out how best to address that.