Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and welcome to our witnesses.
Mr. Williams, first of all, you don't have to convince me of the economic benefits of tourism. I used to head an economic development corporation, and we had a huge focus on tourism and built a whole infrastructure around it. What we found, though, is that governments don't necessarily see it that way; they don't see the economic benefits. We found there was substantial money going to the Canadian Tourism Commission to promote Canada abroad, but we wouldn't invest in local tourism events or infrastructure. So that was extremely frustrating. Economic development agencies actually excluded tourism from their criteria. That's something, it seems to me, we should maybe be focusing on as a government.