Ontario government eliminates tourism funding to Toronto and Ottawa (mai 2019)
Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government has eliminated all of its tourism funding to Toronto and Ottawa, to the tune of $13 million.
Tourism Toronto said the government told them in a recent phone call that their $9.5 million in provincial funding is being cut entirely. That is about a quarter of their budget of just under $40 million, said executive vice-president Andrew Weir.
“This will have real implications and we’re evaluating now what markets we can no longer promote Toronto in, which major conventions and events we can no longer bring to the city,” he said.
“By any objective business metric this is the time to be aggressive with tourism.”
Tourism last year in Toronto generated about $9 billion in direct spending, Weir said.
Toronto Mayor John Tory said 44 million people visited the city last year to spend their money, but the province gets the tax revenue.
“We don’t get a penny of it,” he said. “The province is the beneficiary and yet they took a huge sum of money for Toronto and Ottawa, yes, the two biggest tourism centres in the province, and just took it away. I think that’s bad for Ontario.”
Source: CityNews Toronto
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