I am going to stop right there. I am still referring to the 2009 annual report. On page 11, there are eight tourism industry indicators, including total tourism revenue, total tourism export revenue, total tourism domestic demand, and so on, and in every case, with one exception—the average per person spend per night, which increased by $4—the numbers went down. In every other case, all your indicators decreased. For example, the total number of Canadians employed in the tourism industry was 652,000, but it dropped by 1.6%. In terms of total tourism revenue, there was a drop of 5% in relation to revenues of $71 billion.
In my opinion, the Minister of Industry did not give you $8 million because you were performing well; rather, he gave you that money for other reasons. Deputy Minister Richard Dicerni was here yesterday and told us that you had been given that money to leverage the positive spinoffs of the Olympic Games. But you had already received $7.7 million for the Olympics in 2009; $6.6 million in 2008, and $2.7 million in 2007. You had already received a great deal of money. One has reason to wonder what more you could do in the tourism industry with $8 million that you had taken from the Marquee Tourism Events Program.
What more did you think you could do compared to cultural organizations or marquee tourism events already in place whose budgets were cut?