Thank you, Chair.
Thank you all for coming.
Mr. McKenna, I had your people in and we had a great discussion. I told them about Chatham-Kent—Essex. By the way, thank you for this. With 351 tourism businesses, and 5,125.... That's pretty significant.
I have to tell you a little bit about Chatham-Kent—Essex. If you've never been in that part of the world—and Mr. Shipley will testify to this—it's the greatest agricultural area, with possibly the exception of his riding, but I doubt it. Anyway, we don't have a whole lot to offer in the way of tourism initially, but once you get into the place you start to realize that it is really a great place.
I have to tell you that when I was a kid, we had Rondeau Park. It's still there. If you were a kid you didn't want to go anywhere else but Rondeau Park. It had swimming—I think four beaches—horseback riding, archery, bicycles. It just went on and on. The place was packed. I remember going there when I went to camp one time. I think I was in grade 8 or something like that. The Americans would come in droves with their campers.
Then one day it was decided that we really shouldn't open that park up to people; somebody decided that we should keep it for the animals. They pushed aside the bicycle business, the archery, the horseback riding, and they closed off a significant part of it where we used to camp and swim, and they stopped maintaining certain areas, and guess what? The Americans quit coming.
I would submit to you, sir, that you could advertise until the cows come home, but they won't come back, because it just plain isn't any fun anymore.
I don't know if we're unique in our neck of the woods, and I'm not even criticizing that decision. Somebody made that decision, and if people decide that's what they want to do, then that's what they want to do, but it killed our tourism business. It didn't just kill that. If you're familiar—and Mr. Joanis would know this, as an economist—with the unguided hand, you'll see how the one leads to the next, and how our communities were impacted by that busy....
We do have the best water. It's not in that western basin; it's past that. It's much warmer than in other areas. It's clean water. It has everything going, and that's just one area.
I didn't talk about boating yet, and I don't want to take up all my time, but that was another area. The place used to be crowded with boats, and then they decided to get rid of the boats. They took the docks off the lake, and weeds grew in the bay, and you can't boat there anymore either.
What we still have is an interesting river called the Thames—the English always name things after where they've come from. The French called it La Tranche, and probably for a good reason, because it is kind of a trench. The Americans—we're near Detroit—used to come down Lake St. Clair, and they'd go down this little river, and it was picturesque. It still is; it's a beautiful thing too. We had docks in the city of Chatham—I think we accommodated about 200 of them—and at one point that place was just like Rondeau Park. It was packed. Then we decided that you really shouldn't go any faster than five kilometres an hour. It's about 40 kilometres to the mouth, so do the math and you can figure out how long it takes to get there. It's nice for a while, but after about half an hour you've seen enough of trees and bush and everything else. That industry was killed too.
I applaud you, and I'm asking you what we should do in beautiful Chatham-Kent—Essex to revive our tourism business again if we killed the goose. How can we get that back? What would you suggest?