Cameron Penney
Proposed amendments to the Animal Cruelty and Protection Act was a hot top at the North Western Ontario Tourism Association’s annual spring meeting last Thursday at the Emo Inn.
Laurie Marcil, executive director of Nature and Outdoor Tourism Ontario (NOTO), fears the way in which Bill C-246 is worded could cause problems down the road.
“If the wording goes through, we will all be criminals,” she warned.
“If we bait a hook with a live minnow, or a worm, or if we catch the fish—it’s everything.
“Initially … we never thought it would get any traction,” Marcil added. “However, it has passed second reading and now it could go to committee.
“What I want to do is get the concise information on all the arguments, I want to supply it to industry, and everybody needs to write,” she said.
“Everybody needs to say something to their [member of Parliament].
“This is one of those things that we have to stand up and everybody has to say something,” Marcil stressed.
This bill could impact not only the tourism industry in Canada, but also the farming and fisheries industries, as well as kosher and halal butchers.
“They’ve disguised it so well,” Marcil said.
“Nobody wants puppy mills, and nobody wants to see somebody slice a shark’s fin off and throw it back in the water,” she conceded.
“Nobody wants to see that stuff and that’s how it’s been presented to the public, so we have to be proactive on it,” she reiterated.
Another hot topic within the tourist industry of late has been the bear hunt.
Marcil spoke on the subject since no representatives from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry were available to attend last Thursday’s meeting.
A major change to regulations this year, which Marcil referred to as a “surprise,” called for no bait sites to be within 200 metres from any road for public vehicular traffic or a marked and maintained trail.
“Of course, there were operators that were very concerned, considering there are lots of logging roads and different roads that would then cause a problem,” she said.
Operators likely would have to move their sites because of this amendment to the regulation.
“We have since met with government and gotten them to agree to commit to putting together a protocol document for their field staff and enforcement that would exclude from this regulation any commercial resource extraction roads, [such as] a mining road or forestry road,” Marcil noted.
“We are expecting to see something on that in the next week or so.”
A second major issue has operators concerned about the number of non-resident Black Bear Hunting Licence Validation Certificates, commonly known as a Form 33, they will receive.
“We learned very quickly that all of their numbers are being reduced even from last year’s numbers—and they only had fall hunting then,” Marcil remarked. “It made absolutely no sense to anyone why this was happening.
“And they’ve put this proposal forward to extend the spring bear hunt because we have bear problems, and to encourage the outfitting communities to support reducing the number of human and bear conflicts,” she added.
“Yet they are not willing to harvest any more bear,” Marcil said. “In fact, less than what we did before in many cases.”
The number of Form 33s that outfitters will be allowed had been determined by averaging the number of forms used from 2012-14. But those were poor years for tourism locally.
“They’ve assured us they are going to make every effort to make sure that there is enough Form 33s for every hunter this year, both spring and fall,” Marcil stressed.
Kevin Begin, superintendent for the Canadian Border Services Agency in Fort Frances, also spoke to NWOTA members last Thursday.
He highlighted the importance of temporary residence permits, which allows visitors from the U.S. to come into Canada if they normally would be inadmissible due to a criminal history.
“If somebody had a conviction, and they come to the border and they already booked a big trip … and they find out suddenly that they are inadmissible, we might offer them that temporary residence permit for them to come in for the length of the trip,” Begin explained.
It can take a lengthy amount of time to obtain a temporary residence permit because only two Canadian consulates are operating in the U.S.
But local port-of-entries now are able to use their own discretion and issue permits.
“And then after that, it is on them to go back and make sure that, before they come back on a subsequent trip, they obtain that letter from the consulates.”
Looking ahead to this summer, Begin expects bridge crossings to be up here thanks to a strong American dollar.
“We are going to try to keep up with the demand put on us by the traffic flow, and try to keep our border wait times down by having adequate staff there at the right times,” he pledged.
Meanwhile, Gerry Cariou, executive director of Ontario’s Sunset Country Travel Association, spoke of ways to promote tourist destinations here and how to adapt to a changing media landscape.
“Destination marketing is a rapidly-changing world,” he stressed.
“In the last 10 years, we’ve gone [away] from sport shows, print, and TV advertising.”
Cariou also noted how consumer behaviour has changed and how commercials often are skipped over using a PVR.
“We have to identify how consumers look for information, and do what we have to do to reach them and put Northwestern Ontario at the top of awareness levels,” he stressed.
Cariou also cited the importance of using social media for marketing and adapting to the changes within search engine optimization.
