Thank you.
We are very grateful for MTEP, the marquee tourism events program, because it did help to educate us about the power we can have as a singular sector. And it was a tremendous driver in getting us together and forming the former Canadian Festivals Coalition, now FAME, Festivals and Major Events, so we can speak with one voice about the very positive impact. We very much respected and appreciated the opportunity to work for two years with Industry Canada on what was rolled out as a stimulus program. We always knew it was a term-limited two-year program. We understood that, and respected that it had a sunset on it.
But our learnings from that and the aggregated research you've seen here have allowed us to very confidently state, as we did in meetings with parliamentarians from all parties last week in Ottawa, that we as a sector would guarantee in a new program a return on investment at a minimum of $5 of additional annual tax revenue for every dollar of the $50 million that is invested. Sadly, we heard, particularly from our colleagues in Stratford last week at those meetings in Ottawa, that they have had a significant decrease in tourist visits as a result of not having the extra marketing and programming clout they had from MTEP to help attract those visitors.