Thank you, Monsieur Dion, for the question. I appreciate it.
We are coming up on the cusp of national family fishing week in the next short while. There is also an Ontario family fishing weekend, which brings thousands of people. For instance, just outside of Peterborough we host an event that last year had 2,300 parents and children out on the ice on Chemong Lake ice fishing.
We have two programs at the federation—TackleShare and Travelling TackleShare—that go to all the provincial parks in Ontario and, as our colleagues in Quebec do, provide people from urban centres who might not normally fish and hunt but who might be there with their families the opportunity to have fishing rods and reels. The programs show them how to use these and tell them about the rules and regulations.
The federation has a Get Outdoors program that has exposed thousands of children over the years to hunting, fishing, and shooting with firearms and bows and arrows and crossbows and such things, on a range. We have Get Outdoors camps every summer that are sold out in 33 minutes. Each summer now, we have had to put on three. They bring 600 kids to the Get Outdoors camps, where they learn about hunting and fishing, recreation, ATVing, and such things.
Our heritage centre, which opened three years ago, is a $2-million heritage centre that last year brought through 6,700 school children from areas close to us, with their teachers. It is aligned with both the primary school and the secondary school curriculum in Ontario and teaches them about the heritage activities and tries to impart the love of hunting, fishing, and conservation to these kids.
In Ontario the OFAH provides, on behalf of the Province of Ontario, the hunter education courses. In 2001 we put through 5,000 students; last year we put through 27,000 students. Many of those were women and students under 18 years of age. There is definitely an increase in the interest in hunting and fishing among both young people and women.
In urban areas, we're working right now with the City of Toronto on an urban recreational fishing program that will involve all the municipal areas of the GTA in recreational fishing days and a recreational fishing component that will spread right across the waterfront in the GTA. A bill like this will fit beautifully within this kind of heritage activity in Ontario.
Those are some of the things we're doing to attract new Canadians and young Canadians and more women to hunting and fishing pursuits.