Mr. Chair, this issue is absolutely critical for northwestern Ontario.
My riding of Thunder Bay--Rainy River covers the entire northern boundary of the State of Minnesota. I have three border crossings: Rainy River at the Manitoba border, Pigeon River, Minnesota and also Fort Frances, Ontario.
The decline in American visitors over the past four years results in about $150 million loss of revenue for northwestern Ontario. We know that historically from 1972 to August 2005 the trend has been a 42% decline.
What does that mean for small communities such as those in northwestern Ontario? It means the marginal difference between a business being successful or not. Tourist operators, grocers, the craftsmen, gas bars and recreational suppliers all have been hit in some way or another. The number of stations and the number of opportunities have declined very visibly.
I have been asked by many organizations to speak tonight, particularly by northwestern Ontario tourist operators who have led the campaign for Americans to come back to Canada. We want them.
I believe the government can communicate far more effectively. We have had many issues over the past number of years from handguns, driving under the influence, things even such as mid-west United States potatoes and firewood. All of these have had their impacts on border crossings and complaints.
Ontario has lost a greater portion of the U.S. market for the past four years than any other province. Therefore, our role in dealing with the policies of another sovereign nation must be to emphasize that this is a two way street.
More complications, such as proposed by the western hemisphere travel initiative, will make even more Canadians rethink their plans to visit the United States. This is another form of reciprocity that I do not think anyone in the United States expects. I believe the walls, barriers and restrictions will hurt both our nations.
As a former mayor, I was part of a group that initiated an international friendship games between Thunder Bay, Ontario and Duluth, Minnesota. It is with great enthusiasm that I support His Worship Mayor Dan Onichuk of the town of Fort Frances who has proposed a forum of Canadian and American border communities to address some of these roadblocks as they apply to each particular regional situation.
Our new Canadian Border Services Agency has been working very hard to eliminate the problem situations at the field level. It is the first line of both security and hospitality, which is a difficult combination requiring special skill sets. Considering the volume of people who pass through without incident, it does a great job. However, when someone is turned away, it results in a big furor with rippling adverse publicity.
When I give the Canadian examples, I am only going to emphasize what will happen when the same thing occurs on the American side. When Americans impose more restrictions, it will make it less attractive for Canadians to go there; back to the two way street scenario.
As a government, we need to support, through websites, staff training, presence at trade shows in the United States and any other means, the fact that as Canadians we want Americans. I know our friends in the United States, who are fighting this proposal, also feel the same way. We have to reinforce those positive forces.
When I refer to the two way street for the western hemisphere travel initiative, I know for certain that it will also hurt the U.S. travel industry. Therefore, we must make the American tourism and hospitality industry our allies to resist overly onerous and overly zealous rules and restrictions.
It was quite gratifying as a member of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates to hear witnesses from Passport Canada talk about the progress it has been making in addressing our issues. It will be representing us shortly in the petitions on the western hemisphere travel initiative as part of the general overall governmental perspective.
Making Canada more attractive to our American neighbours, still the longest undefended border in the world, should remain a major point of focus. A national tourism strategy to bring Americans to Canada, working in concert with provincial campaigns, can do much to offset the inevitable negative effects that would surely occur if the WHTI comes into reality.
What does the loss of $150 million a year mean to northwestern Ontario? It will be hugely detrimental. I do not want to use the big negatives like catastrophic, but please do the math. This is a very heavy and consistent drain of an economic multiplier. Not only will it be full time people, but students, part timers, everybody will be hurt, including our national image. What business could sustain such hits year after year?
People in organizations in the Rainy River district, which became part of my riding in the last election, recently decided to stop complaining and do something effective. We had a meeting with everyone concerned. All parties dealing with border crossings came together and the positive and cooperative attitude was excellent.
With the assistance of the Rainy River Futures Development Corporation, we designed and built a visitor-friendly website to make it easier for Americans to visit us. Every time tourist operators are faced with an inquiry from Americans, they know now exactly what they can or cannot bring, what the legal implications of their criminal records may be and how to overcome them.
Currently, a study is underway, helped by the province of Ontario, to get some more finely tuned answers as to why the Americans have stopped coming. We know one thing that we will find from this. The answers that will come from this study also will tell Canadians why they will not be interested in going back to the United States if the border gets tougher to cross.
This example proves what we can do and what we can achieve if we work to find solutions. We could apply this to a two way plan. We have to prove to our American neighbours that we are presenting viable solutions, not making more difficult problems.
On October 31, which I believe is the deadline for submissions, I hope our government, with the combination of people from all parties, support what we have to do. We cannot tell a sovereign nation how to write its legislation, but we can show from example that we are first and foremost a friendly, supportive nation. We saw how extremely effective the Mexican proposal was. Its tourist pitch was “Closer Than Ever”, and that resulted in millions of new visitors to Mexico after 9/11. We know that the potential is there.