Mr. Speaker, I asked the tourism minister to fix his mistakes and stop bragging about cutting the Canadian Tourism Commission's budget by 20% or one-fifth.

This week is Tourism Week in Canada, and it is high time that the minister took responsibility and that the government invested in our tourism industry, which creates many good jobs in every region of the country and promotes the development of our SMEs, the country's main economic engine.

We must keep the industry competitive and take note of the Rozon report, for example. There is no good reason to cut the commission's budget by 20%. These cuts will have a disastrous effect on the industry. The funding must continue so that the our country remains competitive internationally. There is a lot of competition, and the government must invest rather than making cuts. The government must do something about the fact that this industry is underfunded. Tourism is suffering greatly right now because of the Conservatives' lack of interest in this industry.

In 2013, the number of tourists who visited Canada increased by 2.9%, which is woefully inadequate when compared to the fact that the number of international tourists increased by 5% elsewhere in the world. It is unbelievable.

Furthermore, from 2002 to 2012, the number of international visitors to Canada dropped, and Canada fell from 7th to 16th out of the top 20 countries. In 2013 we dropped again to 17th place. If we do not do something now, we will plunge even further down the list and we will never be able to recover from where we have fallen these past few years.

That is why the situation is urgent and worrisome. Hotels, the Office du tourisme, the Canadian Tourism Commission, restaurants and everyone who participates directly or indirectly in this industry will suffer.

In order to get back into the top 10 international tourist destinations, we need to continue making investments. I have a table from the Canadian Tourism Commission that supports what I am saying. If we had maintained or improved our investments in tourism, our increase would have been higher than global growth, since our share of the market was 25% in 1996 before dropping to 12.5% in 2011.

Canada will once again lose one-quarter of its share of the market for long-haul international trips by 2015. That is a loss of 1.2 million potential visitors and $834 million in new export earnings. We need to do everything we can not only to maintain investments, but also to improve this industry. The industry could certainly use it.

Annick Papillon

Transcript

Adjournment Proceedings

Discussions (0)