No, it's all good. I'm not blaming the trail. That's not the problem. I was lucky that I was well prepared with gear.
At any rate, they're good commercials.
One of the things I've had a concern with over the years is the movement of the CTC to Vancouver. At that time, it took place under David Emerson. I've always had a bit of a reservation about taking it out of the Ottawa region and putting it in another part of the country. I know that it was done in large part for the Olympics to promote international visitation, but what I've seen over the years—this is just my general impression—is the reduction of the connection to American visitation.
We saw our numbers go down. For example, I saw border towns like mine not really having much connection to the Canadian Tourism Commission. Our local tourism does dual destinations with the Detroit region. We alone have 40,000 vehicles and 10,000 trucks per day crossing the border. That's one third of the entire Canadian economy going to the United States every single day—that's around $1 billion—within two kilometres of the Detroit River, which is in my riding, with four different crossings. I don't see much of a footprint for the Canadian Tourism Commission there.
Further to that, I went through your guide. I see some really good information. It's good, but you mentioned going outside traditional regions, and when we look at it, we see that you still have Ontario represented by Ottawa in here. You have Banff for Alberta, you have the CN tower in two different pictures, you have Vancouver in here three times, and there are two pictures from Squamish that are identified. These are the iconic locations that we always see in commercials and so forth, and they are also in parts of your videos.
I'll turn it back to you to give some input. Some 80% of our population lives near the U.S. border. For areas on the border, such as my riding, many of the citizens actually vacation in the United States. We're not aware of some of the efforts that are taking place elsewhere. I've grown more aware of that as a parliamentarian. Our natural edge is to go towards the south, not just into Michigan and that area, but to Florida, to Arizona, and all these destinations, yet we don't see much of a CTC footprint or much education going on.
It's not just you. I can tell you that a number of times the Province of Ontario has left us entirely out of tourism initiatives, when we're the front door. In fact, as a city councillor I worked for years to try to get a sign welcoming people to Canada along our border. There's not even that. There's nothing when you come across Ambassador Bridge. I had a failed attempt to try to get a notation of “Welcome to Canada” and so forth. As well, there's not much on our tunnel. They actually closed our tourism office on Huron Church Road, where, again, you have 35,000 to 40,000 vehicles a day going by in one direction or another.
What are the things we can do to improve, not only to keep Canadians here, but to give them better options and to better educate them about the fact that they are in Canada so that they're not just south of the border all the time? What are the plans to actually increase visitation into border towns?