Thank you, Mr. Chair.
There is snow out west, Mr. Chair, and you need to know that. We have pictures and we post them on Facebook on an ongoing basis. It drives everyone crazy.
Good morning to everyone, and thank you very much to the committee for sitting and talking about snowmobiling. It is October and winter is coming down the pipeline.
I sit here as Dennis Burns. I am the executive director for the Canadian Council of Snowmobile Organizations. We're a volunteer-led, not-for-profit national voice for organized trails for all of Canada. We've been in business since about 1974 and we've been in Ottawa many times looking for ongoing partnerships due to the base of how we operate and what we do.
I'll bring the three previous presenters into my conversation because we actually work very closely with all three of them, so it's great.
We have a little over 120,000 kilometres of trails in Canada, which represent about 48% of all organized and managed trails in Canada today. If you want to know who is the biggest and who has the most trails out there, it's definitely snowmobilers. What's really unique about snowmobilers is that they will create a trail. They'll get up in the morning and decide that perhaps they need to put a trail some place to connect a new business, to actually reach across a farmer's land and get into the right piece of property, and they'll put a trail in. What normally happens is that the trail is then used for all four seasons.
We have many examples just north of the city of Toronto, where there are some incredible bridges that were put in, led by a volunteer snowmobile group. They're million-dollar bridges and now they're for four-season use. What's really unique about snowmobilers is that they wake up, they dream big, and they actually work the paper and meet with the partners to get the money to actually do a project, and at the end of the day, all four seasons get to benefit from the bridge.
We've recently completed our economic impact study. An economist, Harry Cummings out of the University of Guelph, put it together. We pay $1.4 billion each and every year in taxes to all three levels of government. We used the Conference Board of Canada's actual model. They created the TREIM model for Ontario, the tourism regional economic impact model and that nets $1.4 billion each and every year.
Again, the same study confirms there are 41,000 jobs through the course of snowmobiling all across Canada, and the number of family members involved in it is, very conservatively, about 1.5 million to 1.8 million active snowmobilers across Canada. We're very proud of that.
The main snowmobile manufacturer in Canada comes out of Quebec. Bombardier Recreational Products built the Ski-Doo, which is very popular across Canada and it does have the largest market share. They're all built here in Canada. The only thing that comes from elsewhere is the engine, which actually comes out of Austria.
If you look at the economic impact spin, in Quebec alone it's about $2.2 billion, and $1.7 billion here in the province of Ontario just from snowmobiling. Add into that the economics from building the snowmobiles in Valcourt, which adds in about another $1.2 billion. It's a really big industry. A lot of people don't realize how big we are. Overall, for our economic impact across Canada, we're looking at $8 billion, and we're very proud of that too.
When we look at who is actually paying for the trail system and access to the trails, we work our model on what is called a user-pay system. To drive your snowmobile on a trail you have to put a pass or a permit on it so we actually collect user-pay fees from the individuals. Therefore, we come as a very strong member, showing the government that we have $58 million that we're sitting on, as we prepare to expand our fleet and do more work on the trails. That's our part of the user-pay system, which is $58 million.
We've just completed a news release and the average age of a snowmobiler is 44 years. We've been in business since 1974, which I've already shared. We have 729 clubs across Canada. The unique thing about the clubs in Canada that provide the snowmobile trails is that this is not a business for us. This is done on a volunteer basis. That's the very unique thing about snowmobiling. A lot of people say, “It's big business, then”. It is, but it's all driven on the backs of the volunteers. A lot of our people are consuming the beverages from my friend, and we stay at the B and B locations all across Canada.
We're right now working through a study with the University of Guelph that speaks to the health of snowmobiling, and one chapter I'm going to add in particular is the mental health portion of it, because we really feel that a lot of people get very depressed in January and February. The concern is “Oh, my God, it's snowing outside” and everybody says, “Bundle up, stay at home, and don't do anything”. Snowmobilers say, “What a fantastic day for snowmobiling.”
I turn on the weather broadcast and it says it's -21°, but it's -30° with the wind chill. I said don't worry about the wind chill. We make wind when we go snowmobiling, so that's the best part of the whole day. We absolutely take advantage of it.
We represent everybody across Canada in organized trails, except Nunavut. We have no organized snowmobile trails. We've tried over a number of years, but once they get north of town, it's the tundra. It's just open riding. There are no organized trails there.
Our demographics work out to about seventy-thirty. Seventy per cent of our riders are male, while 30% are female. It's really key. We have potential growth with the ladies' side of the things. We've started Women on Snow. We have a major ride that has gone across Canada four times that's sponsored by Polaris. We've done a number of these rides. We have new ladies. She Shreds is one of the new businesses based in B.C. She is doing a fantastic business. She's teaching ladies to ride with ladies. They go into the mountains and they don't have their husbands, or boyfriends, or I guess in today's world, wives would be a correct statement as well. The concept is that they don't have anybody watching. They find that, if ladies teach ladies how to ride, they are not nearly as stressed and they learn how to do it a lot better, so we hope to increase our percentage of lady riders far above 30%.
Each and every year snowmobilers are very big advocates in the individual communities. They raise a lot of money. Ongoing, they average a little over $3 million, which they raise and they provide. The same volunteers that raise money for the local fire department are the same ones that work very hard at the local snowmobile club.
What we're looking for is a partnership with the government. My request is very clear. Over the five years, we would be looking for $8 million a year. That would be $40 million. At the same time, we pay about $7 billion in taxes. We're not looking for a major investment, just a small return on the amount of volunteer work that happens all across Canada.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.