Thank you all for being here today.
I'm going to focus my questions towards Michele from the Canadian Tourism Commission.
Obviously, as the chair of the parliamentary tourism caucus and as the member of Parliament for Banff, one of our most beautiful tourism areas in the country, I've had a lot of opportunity to talk about the work you do and the tourism industry in general. You understand, as I do, how important the tourism industry is. We talk about a $74 billion industry. We talk about 600,000 Canadian jobs. Obviously, the work you are doing on the marketing side is an important piece of the success that the tourism industry enjoys in Canada, so I want to commend you for that. You have demonstrated what we can accomplish in that regard by being innovative and focused in our marketing efforts.
An important part of that is how well you work together both with our government, in terms of some of the initiatives we have, and also with other organizations, such as provincial organizations and destination marketing organizations across the country. I think a great example of that was when our Prime Minister gained approved destination status from China, which was a very significant thing our government was able to accomplish for the tourism industry, in working together with you guys and destination marketing organizations in parts of the country. I certainly know that in my area of Banff-Lake Louise, there was an award-winning tourism campaign around that. So we've been able to demonstrate how successful we can be in drawing travel when we all work together.
You had the video on the “Locals Know” campaign, and I want to point out in particular how brilliant I thought that campaign was. It was certainly very helpful to the industry.
I want to look at the numbers you have provided us here about that campaign, in terms of how successful it has been. You talked about some of the measurables: 4.5 million more trips by Canadians as a result, $1.2 billion more in tourism revenue, and 10,000 more jobs. Those are pretty significant results you were able to garner from that.
I want to look at that and then at the proposal before us, which I'm very intrigued about, for youth travel for our 150th anniversary. What do you anticipate or project as the results of a campaign like that in terms of those same kinds of numbers? What would we expect in terms of increased trips and jobs for people in the industry and revenues for the tourism industry? Can you give us some idea of what your projections would be?