Industry committee  On the larger issue of the American market, that takes a long time. Let me talk about the representation issue, because our board is regularly under renewal. There are two vacancies right now. And the Governor in Council is well aware of that. We welcome diversity, regionally a

Industry committee  Mr. Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity. As I said in my opening statement, we're very glad to come back at any point in time within whatever study context the committee would like to hear from us.

Industry committee  This dovetails with the previous answer. We actually spend a lot of time going through economic modelling on these issues. You also have to factor in the yield of that customer. When we crunch through the model, it really looks as though the best way to deploy our investment is w

Industry committee  It's a difficult decision to make. It's easy to say I love all my children, but we're trying to achieve a balanced market approach, or a balanced portfolio approach. That means not putting our eggs into too many baskets. Some destinations saw the growth by China and just put so m

Industry committee  Roughly, domestic spends less. It's a bigger percentage. Our biggest challenge is that pre-2002, Canada's split was roughly sixty-forty—60% domestic receipts, 40% international. It's now eighty-twenty. Obviously, it's new dollars to the Canadian economy, which is critical, but

Industry committee  Can I circle back to your point on trade, which I thought was very important? Deloitte released a report about two years ago—and we'll furnish it for the committee–that drew a direct line through econometric data that for every 1% increase we do in visitation to Canada, it leads

Industry committee  The short answer is yes, some of the small Canadian companies we work with are actually in the educational business. Not only are they good customers, they're great future customers as well.

Industry committee  Yes, it has. That's been filed as part of our corporate plan with Treasury Board.

Industry committee  Well, I had breakfast with the new president of Ottawa Tourism this morning, and I had a meeting with City Hall today. First of all, Ottawa Tourism is a very close partner of ours on a number of projects, in a number of markets. We have a 150th program, which we spoke of, that'

Industry committee  That's an excellent question. Do you have any other questions?

Industry committee  I take the glass half-full approach. I think we're a much more efficient organization than we were four years ago, and marketing has changed a great deal in the last four or five years. I'm not prepared to Monday morning quarterback any of the decisions that were taken by my pr

Industry committee  That's right.

Industry committee  I'm not naive enough to say that it's not helpful, but it's not as helpful as people think. In fact, the acknowledgement of the difference in the dollar is very low in the U.S. right now. It's actually more impactful in some other countries like Australia, where they're going to

Industry committee  If it's okay, for the second part of the question I'd rather get back to you in a detailed response in writing.

Industry committee  We do have some data. It's a little imperfect data on domestic spend, but we do have some data on that. As far as agricultural tourism is concerned, I had the great gift at lunch today to eat a piece of cod that was hand-caught at Fogo Island. To us, agricultural tourism is a re