Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the committee. Thank you, Mr. Jeneroux, for pointing out a few wonderful things about our event.
Welcome to Edmonton. It's always 20 degrees here, even in December, because the Oilers won yesterday, so it gets warmer.
My name is Jim Gibbon. I'm the executive director of the Edmonton Heritage Festival Association. You've heard a little bit about our event. We are the world's largest cultural event. Between 350,000 and a half a million people visit our river valley over three days. We've been recently recognized by the United Nations as an intangible cultural asset because of our size and longevity. Our 46th year is coming up this year. We are a member of FAME, Festivals and Major Events Edmonton, and we're working together with them to try to get some help with the biggest issue we're facing right now.
I want to emphasize the importance of security for the people who come to our river valley to support multiculturalism. We had over 100 representative cultural groups last year in 300 tents, and again, last year, 340,000 people came down to see it.
Our security costs have, indeed, gone from $4,000 a year, where it was almost marginal in our budget, to an estimated $240,000 this year. Our cash budget is $1.1 million, and that hasn't changed in 20 years. We've taken 25% of our budget now and moved it directly into festival costs in the form of security. When you see what's going on in the world, you kind of understand why we've had to do that. You don't want those sorts of things to happen here. We spoke for a few moments about some of the risks that we worry about at this point in time.
All I want to say is, this is moving money from the event itself, where people come down and celebrate multiculturalism and, again, we have the world's largest here. If you get a chance, come visit it. It's an astonishing event, and there's nothing of its scale anywhere else in North America. You have to see it to believe it. I'm so proud to be a part of it, because we're telling the world that Canada is the way the rest of the world should be. We're not perfect yet, but we sure try to get there, and we have this amazing multicultural society that we're so happy to share and to celebrate with the rest of the world.
It's getting to the point where we're risking these. I want to point out, again, we are a not-for-profit. I know there's concern about helping for-profit companies. We had, last year, 72 not-for-profit cultural groups provide the pavilions that people come down to see. There's no for-profit businesses on site.
We're also a charity. We rely on charitable donations just to help us survive in today's society. That money that is potentially on the table right now is of enormous importance. It's not just for us, but for all the other groups like us out there that celebrate Canada, and it's just getting to the point where all we're doing now is paying security. We're not really using that money to celebrate our own country.