Thank you, Chair.
Good afternoon, everyone. Please everyone stay safe. The safer we are, the quicker we'll get through this and then hopefully the quicker we can get back to normality and start attracting visitors to come back to Canada, because we know 2019 was a record year for us.
I want to give two quick shout-outs, first of all to the Northwest Territories tourism association. As a finance committee member in the prior session of Parliament, we had a chance to visit the Northwest Territories. I believe we went up to Yellowknife for a set of hearings during finance committee travels. It was the first time I had been up north and it was absolutely stunning to see. The hotel was full of tourists and we need those folks back. Secondly, thank you to everybody who's on the call and putting forward their ideas. We are at a very unique time.
I agree with a lot of the good ideas being put out today. I agree that, in terms of the duration of the recovery of the tourism and hospitality sector, whether you're talking about your local banquet hall or your local hotel or tourism operator, they're going to need help and we need to be there for you, so please continue putting forward those ideas.
I want to ask, starting with the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, about the longer term, how we compete against Japan, Europe or the United States, or California if I go into the sub-regions, in terms of attracting people from overseas to come to Canada. We know that we want those high-quality, high-margin travellers. If we could think of three things that we need to do, not only short term but longer term, to get those numbers back up, what would be those three ideas that you would put forward?