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Over the past weeks, TIAO has been working hard to make tourism a key election issue.  

TIAO has been meeting with candidates of all political parties to talk about why Ontario needs tourism; the state of tourism recovery; the opportunities for jobs, community infrastructure, and economic growth if we get recovery right; and how each party can support the tourism industry as we move beyond the pandemic.  

To join us in these meetings, we’ve invited TIAO members in each candidate’s riding—including individual businesses, DMOs, and tourism officials—to provide a local perspective of the challenges and opportunities facing local tourism, from Kenora-Rainy River to Sudbury, Oxford County to Niagara Falls, Kitchener-Waterloo to Scarborough-Guildwood, and many more.

With over 20 meetings and counting and with just a week to go until the election, our job is far from over. We need to keep tourism on the agenda of all candidates vying for office. We encourage you to keep sending letters to your local candidates using our push politics tool on our mini-site, and we encourage you to keep sharing our key messages with the hashtag #OntarioNeedsTourism – see here for our election toolkit.

Thank you for your continued support. And of course, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send me an email at jng@tiaontario.ca.

Dr. Jessica Ng
Director of Policy and Government Affairs

There are just two weeks until election day in Ontario and I want to thank every TIAO member and stakeholder that has accessed, shared or encouraged others to visit our non-partisan election website ontarioneedstouirsm.ca . In just two weeks we’ve had over 1,000 unique hits on our website, arranged over 30 meetings with election candidates and had over 140 media hits on the key issues affecting tourism, including twelve broadcast interviews. Every time you share ontarioneedstourism.ca or use the hashtag #OntarioNeedsTourism on social media it encourages more people to utilize our election toolkit and helps us ensure prospective MPP’s from all parties fully understand the challenges still faced by the tourism industry in Ontario. With two weeks to go, we’re arranging new meetings with candidates on a daily basis, so please to continue to share our resources and if you haven’t already sent your letter, why not do it this evening!  

Away from the provincial election, there was an important announcement from Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, as he officially opened up a consultation on the renewal of Canada’s Federal Tourism Growth Strategy.  

TIAC President and CEO, Beth Potter, has confirmed that the consultation, which is now open until July 20, “will encompass two key initiatives:  i) by-invitation-only roundtables on each the themes of Destination Development, Sports Tourism, Rural Tourism, Culinary Tourism, Labour and Workforce, Community and Culture, and Indigenous Tourism, as well as a number of regional roundtables which will cover all these themes, and ii) written submissions.  We understand the intention is to conclude all the roundtables by end of June.”   

TIAO intends to put forward its own recommendations to the consultation and will be engaging you on what should be in our submission shortly. It’s vital that as we slowly exit the pandemic, this new updated strategy reflects a whole government approach to securing the future prosperity of the tourism industry in Canada.  In the meantime, if you have questions about the process, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can visit the consultation website here to learn more. 

Finally, TIAO, recently met with Minister Boissonnault alongside our colleagues from the Culinary Tourism Alliance, George Brown College, Destination Toronto and Executive Chef and business owner Thompson Tran, to discuss the future advancement of culinary tourism in Ontario. It was an excellent discussion and it was exciting to hear the Minister’s passion for the future of culinary tourism in Ontario and Canada as a whole. 

Christopher Bloore,

President and CEO.