Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I'm very pleased to be here today on behalf of the Conference Board.
Basically, I'm here today with the Conference Board to be an objective voice and an impartial adviser, to some extent, even though this is clearly an issue that also affects many of our members from provincial governments, city governments, and businesses in the tourism industry throughout the country.
At this point, what we're trying to do is understand what the potential impact might be of the elimination of the visitor rebate program, and perhaps even the likelihood of it going forward or possibly being revoked.
That being said, there is a definite potential for a serious financial impact on the Canadian tourism industry. The Conference Board of Canada has been instrumental in doing impact analyses on a number of issues that have affected the industry, most notably the WHTI impact on the tourism industry from the U.S. Right now, though, what we have to say is that there isn't quite enough statistical analysis done and not really enough data to thoroughly conclude that the impact would be minimal. It could potentially be quite large.
We believe the impact could be significant, because the convention business represents a significant chunk of the visitor rebate program and the competitiveness of that industry. Also, many foreign tour operators don't price in the GST when they offer their products to foreign visitors.
A lot of the feedback we receive from our panels that we follow in the U.S. and overseas markets shows that they're very concerned about the impact of the visitor rebate program and what it will do to their offerings into Canada. And as we've heard before, Canada is already suffering from a competitive decline.
As a country, Canada has become more expensive against virtually every major foreign competitor out there. We've seen that in the numbers. We've seen the numbers slip in terms of overseas arrivals, certainly the numbers of American arrivals. For instance, the U.S. cost of travel to Canada has gone up almost 50% over the past two years. A trip that used to cost, let's say, $700 may now cost $1,000. That's a significant increase.
On balance, we'd like to urge the government to be very diligent when they do go ahead and implement this cut in the visitor rebate program, because it does affect the competitiveness of the Canadian tourism industry as a whole.