Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today.
I'm David MacLachlan, executive director of Destination Northern Ontario. I'm also a tourist operator, having grown up in the industry. My family operates one of the largest fly-in fishing and hunting operations in the country. This is our 65th year of business.
Destination Northern Ontario is a not-for-profit tourism organization that looks to grow the tourism sector through programming, product development, investment attraction, workforce development in industry and training and, of course, marketing.
Northern Ontario is a large region. It's roughly the size of France and Germany combined, with a robust and—prepandemic—growing tourism sector. Before COVID-19, the region saw 8.5 million visits, generating $1.6 billion in tourism receipts and roughly $500 million in tax revenues for the three levels of government. In 2019, 4.9% of visitors were from overseas markets and visitors from the U.S. contributed half a billion dollars in tourism revenues.
The land border is of unique importance, as 94% of all visitors to northern Ontario arrived via road.
I think we can agree that the tourism, travel and hospitality sectors have been the hardest hit of any sector impacted by the global pandemic. I want to thank all the members for all the support they have given the industry over the last two seasons.
However, the hardest hit of the hardest hit has to be the resource-based tourism sector, which is very dependent on the U.S. market. As you move from east to west in northern Ontario and get to the Lake Superior region and the northwest, virtually 100% of clients for our iconic Canadian lodges, camps and fly-in outposts come from the U.S. This is due to demographics, proximity to market and market size.
The last two years have been extremely difficult, with the region losing $1 billion in tourism receipts from U.S. guests. The RBT sector has had tremendous difficulty in attracting domestic business. We had hoped that we would see a turnaround this year. However, a recent survey completed by Nature and Outdoor Tourism Ontario shows that the sector recorded $100 million in cancellations in May. While the reasons vary, the vast majority cite border restrictions.
I can concur that, as an organization, this is what we're hearing from operators. We can confirm this from our own experience and our lodge business, where we saw 70 cancellations in May, again, all citing border restrictions. That represented about 15% of our business. I'd like to say that cancellations continue to outpace new reservations.
Recently, the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario, in their newsletter, indicated that border crossings in 2022 are at about 50% of 2019's. I've submitted both the NOTO survey and the TIAO newsletter to the committee.
While the ArriveCAN app is easy to use and works well—as a resident of a border community in Sault Ste. Marie, I've easily used the app—from the perspective of a visitor to Canada and, especially, for Americans crossing at the land border, it's our opinion, and the statistics show, that the app and cumulative impacts of other border restrictions are deterring visits from our friends south of the border. This is a huge loss of revenues for our operators and tax revenues for government. These are new dollars to the Canadian economy that positively impact our balance of trade. I would assume that our northern Ontario experience is repeated in other regions in Canada.
Simply said, our sector would like to see a suspension of the use of the ArriveCAN app at our land border as soon as possible and a cessation of all other border restrictions, especially as financial supports for the tourism sector have been withdrawn. We need to level the playing field with other destinations.
Thank you for the opportunity today.
I look forward to answering any questions.