In budget 2017, we saw an investment in Statistics Canada to broaden tourism data collection. We need this data to effectively measure the growth of our tourism industry and to assess the effectiveness of our international tourism marketing efforts, so better data on domestic travel. It will also strengthen planning for domestic tourism activity. That's where this commitment of $13.6 million over five years is coming from, and then $2.7 million thereafter, to expand Canada's tourism data collection.
Basically this investment will be used to address existing data gaps, in particular for international tourists who enter Canada by land as well as for international and domestic visitors to the north, while broadening the sample size for specific regions. This is to enable Destination Canada to better look at what markets we want to be targeting. Where are people coming from, and where is the potential in other markets?
We also want to be looking at the average spend of the visitors. We want to ensure they are bringing those export dollars to our country, helping our SMEs. It is also so that I can better ballpark when you're asking me questions like this. What is the potential? Where are we at? What's the curve looking like?
As you know, the government believes in evidence-based decision-making, hence an investment to make sure we have good data to back that as well.