Industry Committee on Dec. 7th, 2009

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll go on to Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I'll follow up with that.

I think one of the things we're underestimating, though, is that a number of Americans will not get a passport for personal privacy reasons. There is a whole series of different things that we can't deal with on this side over here without an organized strategy. So one of the things I'd like to know and get some input here on is this. Would your associations be open to the concept of working with the government or government agencies and the business community to set goals in the United States?

Around 32% or 33% of Americans have passports. I think we should be actively engaging in a campaign in the U.S. to help acquire those passports. I look at the casino industry in Windsor, where they help facilitate that process, because unless they get an enhanced driver's licence or a passport, three-quarters of our customer base is dead in the water. We need to think about that. I throw that out there. What other strategies can be employed to remedy that problem? You don't even have that decision-making capability if you don't have that driver's licence or passport.

[Christopher Jones]

To the extent that we're trying to shape the policies of a foreign government, obviously Canada only has so much control. But in terms of getting more trusted traveller documents in the hands of the Americans, we do acknowledge that their passport ownership rate is lower; but having said that, they've now issued a pass card, which is a smaller, cheaper, wallet-sized version. There are about a million of those in circulation.

There has been a lot of misunderstanding about children. There has been the wrong impression that kids under 16 need a passport, when they don't. They can get by with just a birth certificate as long as their parents have passports. But we're believers that there should be a multiplicity of documents, from NEXUS cards to pass cards to enhanced drivers' licences to more passports. And in fairness to the Americans, they have set up what are called mobile enrolment teams, where the State Department is moving around the country, going to small communities and enrolling people with passports.

So it's slowly coming up. It's not as high as the Canadian one, but we need it to come up.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

But the issue is this. Do you believe there's a role for us to be engaged in this, to try to encourage that, or do we simply accept whatever the United States programming departments want to do and hope Americans eventually get these documents?

[Christopher Jones]

I would suggest that the bigger factor is that, post-9/11, there's been a policy of buying American, staying at home, a little bit of a siege mentality within the United States, and until that lifts I'm not sure. These initiatives will make a difference at the margins, but I'm not sure whether they will bring the massive numbers back. We're at levels we haven't seen since the 1970s right now. So it's pretty tough.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

That's it. I still think we're sitting on our hands feeling sorry for ourselves as opposed to engaging in a real solution.

[Anthony Pollard]

There's been a lot of discussion with people. Why don't we just go out and buy...? What does a passport cost in the States, Brian?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

About $80.

[Anthony Pollard]

If you're going to go out and bring in a big convention or something, typically the people there already have passports. We're looking at the people who will go across the river, across the bridge to your hometown. How do we influence them? How do we get the guy who would go to the casinos where Mr. Brown is located, and say...? Do you buy them the passport?

Mr. Masse, there was some research conducted, I believe, a couple of years ago that asked what would happen if we actually went out and bought people passports. The conclusions were really not the appropriate vehicle to pursue. I think what we need to do is become a lot more clever when it comes to marketing. Now, I'm talking about hotels, not simply our country, on which I really defer to my colleague Ms. McKenzie. What are we doing with all the social media out there? What are we doing to be able to let people know what's up here and what we're doing? I think it would be a lot more effective in this new age we're in today than perhaps buying somebody passports.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I'm not sure there was a reference to that.

I'll give you an example. Casino Windsor actually helps Americans facilitate their application for their card. They debunk the myths and the confusion that's out there. That's not really happening over in the United States to any degree. There are those roving groups they have, and they have opened more aggressive offices, there's no doubt, but we've totally assented to their process. I don't know, I just think it's irresponsible of us, including the industry, if we don't think we're going to actually engage in trying to get Americans or convincing them it's worthwhile to make that investment to get a passport or to get a document to come over here. If we simply leave them to do it alone, I think we're not seizing an opportunity.

[Anthony Pollard]

One of the things I've always been a big believer in.... You have all these great big city visitor bureaus, if you will, that are spending phenomenal amounts of money all over the place to attract people. I often wonder why you don't take $1 million and go and buy a convention, instead of taking $1 million and dividing it up with 20 different things. Just say, okay, we're going to get the rate where you want it; we're going to show Canada what it is. I would be inclined to do that, but I don't run a visitor bureau; I run a hotel association. I think there are creative things we could do in this age we're in right now.

I'd be interested in pursuing it further. Do I have the answer? No.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Thank you, Mr. Masse.

Now we'll go on to Mr. Wallace.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have only one question for our guests. I'm going to share my time with Mr. Warkentin.

I used to read Marketing magazine, and I understand CTC got the award of marketer of the year. I don't recall ever seeing any government in there getting the award before, so congratulations on that.

I was involved with the branding of Burlington, my hometown and my riding, and we were looking at branding just for business visitors and other business opportunities really and not necessarily for the vacationing tourist. Why is it important for this brand? What's the new brand saying about Canada, which you got the award for? What do you see as its shelf life, and where do you think it should go from here?

[Michele McKenzie]

Thank you.

I guess we need to explain a little the reason we launched a refreshed tourism brand for Canada, because people would say that people kind of already know what Canada is. It's one of the most loved countries in the world. People want to live here. They want to immigrate here. They love the idea of Canada. But what we had found is that they didn't translate that into a reason to travel here. As much as everyone in the world who had a passport--getting back to those passport people--thought Canada was on the list of the top five places they wanted to travel to sometime in their lifetime, it was very hard for Canada to get to the top of the list in any given year because we weren't seen as very compelling.

So the work we did with the brand was to try to deepen people's understanding of what Canada was as a country in terms of the types of travel experiences they could have. That's where the “keep exploring” brand developed. The award for being the top marketer of the year was just announced today, so you're on top of that. I think the work that we're doing with social media and in trying to be very innovative in terms of how we get our message out has largely been driven by wanting to be more effective marketers but also wanting to be more efficient with our spending. We know we can be very efficient in the social media space, and it has been working for us.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Congratulations on the award.

Chris.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Michele, I'll keep on you just for a second. I actually have the distinct privilege of representing one of the largest dinosaur deposits in the country. That's just outside of Grande Prairie, and I think you might have the stat in terms of the tourist--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

The committee members may laugh, except that it's a fact that dinosaurs happen to be the number one tourist attraction, when people are polled around the world.

I wonder if there has been any consideration given to marketing the actual rich deposits that we have here in Canada as they relate to people coming, because when polled, people in the world have shown that the number one tourist destination actually is one that has something to do with dinosaurs. I thought it was an interesting statistic, and I'm wondering if you've done any research or if your organization has done any research on that.

[Michele McKenzie]

We just ran the LOCALSKNOW campaign this summer, to try to inspire Canadians about the very exotic types of experiences they could have in Canada. They wouldn't have to travel all around the world to have these experiences. One of them was a dinosaur experience that they could have in Alberta. It was a huge surprise even to Canadians that such an experience was available. So I think that by trying to get the message out here at home, we'll be able to start to build that experience more effectively and to package it so that we can market it abroad.

We're not seeing the interest in dinosaurs per se spiking in the research that we see, but we do see lots of interest in authentic culture and history. It's certainly one of the segments of travelling that we are pursuing, and we think there's a great fit there. The work we did under the LOCALSKNOW program helps us build a foundation for that.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you for that.

We're going to continue to market our dinosaurs back home as well. I mean, they're not going anywhere. They're there for a while.

[A voice]

We hope not. When they do, they'll be really popular.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you.

In terms of things that are living, I appreciate the fact that the temporary foreign worker program has been mentioned by several of you. I've had the opportunity to work with the Canadian Restaurants and Foodservices Association on this issue. It's a number one issue. When I speak to any of my hotel owners, any of my restaurant owners, they say please make sure this program is sustained.

I wonder if you could, for this committee's sake, explain to us what would happen if in fact the temporary foreign worker program ceased to exist, especially in communities like ours where, even today when there's higher unemployment, these business owners are continuing to struggle to fill postings in their facilities.

[Joyce Reynolds]

The food service industry is very similar to what Tony articulated for the accommodation industry. There continue to be pockets across the country where there are still real issues in terms of being able to find staff, and I'm talking about all skill levels—but during the severest part of the crisis there were restaurants that had to close their operations for different parts of the day. There were franchisees throwing the keys back at franchisors. There were huge lineups at restaurants because they were so short-staffed. Owner-operators were doing all the jobs within their restaurant.

When the changes were made to the temporary foreign worker program so that we were able to take advantage of that program, these people were welcomed into the communities and they were welcomed by their colleagues. It actually made it easier for us to get Canadians to work in those restaurants as well, because a Canadian who wouldn't apply for the job would suddenly see that it wasn't totally chaotic. Those people who had trained in hotel and food management programs would say, “Okay, yes, there are actually people here to manage; I'm interested in taking a job at a restaurant,” as opposed to knowing they were going to come in and work 16-hour days, seven days a week, doing everything from cleaning toilets to trying to do.... Well, there was no payroll to do, because there were so few people they could hire.

It brought a real sense of stability to a lot of restaurant operations. There were real advantages. There were so many advantages that I could go on forever in terms of what the temporary foreign worker program provided.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

And you would state that your organization still believes that this program is relevant and must be maintained.

[Joyce Reynolds]

Absolutely.