Last June, Ed Zaverucha was busy preparing for the season. Two groups were set to come to Cochrane from Pennsylvania for a bear hunt; Americans are a mainstay of Zaverucha’s business. The weather started running hot and dry about a week before their expected arrival. Then, wildfires started, just as they’re already starting around the province this May.
“It was about two days before the guys were supposed to be leaving to come up, and she just exploded,” says Zaverucha, owner of Zaverucha Outfitters, a tourism outfitter that holds black-bear hunts in the spring and fall. “Fire started all over.”
He called the group and told them to wait a few days to see whether a good rainstorm would bring the fires under control. It didn’t happen. “Within three days, we realized it was bigger than what we thought,” he says. “I have a buddy that owns a helicopter, works for the [fire services], and he sent me some pictures. It was unbelievable how big it was.”
Zaverucha had to cancel the hunt and with it, his spring season. He estimates his business lost 40 per cent of its annual income. He had already purchased gas and food and had spent $4,900 in lease fees owed to the Ministry of Natural Resources — money he couldn’t recoup.
(A spokesperson for the ministry told TVO Today via email that “the ministry understands that access to some commercial outpost camp locations may be impacted by travel restrictions in order to ensure public safety in an active fire area.” The standard Land Use Permit conditions, they added, stipulate that access to the lands is “strictly the responsibility of the permittee” and “there are no other representations, warranties or conditions between the Crown and the permittee for the use of the described lands or that the described lands are fit for the permittee’s intended or permitted purpose.”)
His father, who started the outfitting business, taught him to put money away when he could, he says, so he scraped up enough to pay the lease fees and hold a fall hunt. “Every year, you worry about how many customers you’re going to get and how the season’s going to go,” he says. “You worry about if you’re going to make it or not, if you’re going to be able to handle it.”
Across the province, tourism businesses large and small are gearing up for the summer season. But this industry is still recovering from the fundamental changes wrought by COVID-19. Operators like Zaverucha find themselves coping with high inflation and labour shortages. Then there are the fires and the floods and the warm winters, like the one that just wrecked the skating season on Ottawa’s Rideau Canal for the second year in a row.
Industry stakeholders, as well as the auditor general’s office, say that a clearer vision is needed from the province to help tourism recover from COVID-19, decarbonize, and weather economic shocks.
Agenda segment, June 7, 2022: Ontario's make or break tourism season?
Yet the province has not released a comprehensive tourism strategy since Doug Ford was elected premier in 2018.
TVO Today reached out to Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport Neil Lumsden (Hamilton East–Stoney Creek) for comment. A spokesperson indicated by email that he was unavailable, as “he is in [Yukon] for a federal-provincial-territorial Culture Ministers meeting.”
“Tourism is an important economic driver and strengthening this sector plays a significant role in delivering on these priorities and promoting communities throughout Ontario,” a separate ministry spokesperson told TVO Today by email. “In 2023-24, Ontario is investing nearly $40 million in the tourism sector.”
Tourism’s impact goes beyond the billions it contributes to provincial GDP and provincial tax revenue each year and the more than 600,000 people it employs. Experts say the success of this industry has an outsize impact on the province’s reputation and ability to attract national and international attention. It also carries particular importance for the main streets of Ontario’s small towns — and in the province’s north, where tourism is a leading industry.
“Tourism… has a huge ripple effect,” says Daniel Safayeni, vice-president for policy of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. When the industry does well, he says, it attracts visitors who bring significant cash into the local economy. That money sustains local businesses and bankrolls infrastructure investments that benefit both residents and visitors.
But the opposite is also true: when tourism is struggling, the local economy lags. That’s particularly true for smaller and rural economies, says Safayeni, in which “tourism sometimes plays an outsized share of the all-around economic activity in that particular region.”
Tourism revenue in Ontario is on its way to reaching and slightly surpassing its pre-pandemic levels, but the future is far from certain, and the pace of industry growth is slow. Key areas remain troublesome, says Andrew Siegwart, president and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario: lagging international visits, reduced business and corporate travel, and persistent staffing challenges. “The benchmark will be once we pass fully the 2019 economic-performance numbers,” he says.
The picture of tourism’s recovery is further clouded by inflation. Operating costs like food and fuel have increased substantially, says Laurie Marcil, executive director of the Northern Ontario Tourist Outfitters Association, which also operates as Nature & Outdoor Tourism Ontario. The association represents 230 businesses in the outdoor tourism sector. Because of climate-change-related weather instability, she says, insurance costs have become a particular issue: “We’ve heard anywhere from 30 per cent increases to 50 per cent increase in premiums for an insurance policy that covers less.”
Ontario also faces competition from other provinces, says Siegwart, as well as from other places around the globe: “Other regions in Canada are upping their investment to recruit international visitors and to recruit Canadians to travel to their region.” British Columbia and Quebec, Ontario’s two big competitors for market share, released new comprehensive tourism-recovery strategies in 2022. Recent research from Destination Canada identifies that Canada as a whole is also at risk of losing out, notably on U.S. and U.K. tourist dollars.
According to a series of value-for-money audits on the sector released by the auditor general last December, the provincial government’s investment in tourism lacks vision. “Overall, we found that the Ministry does not have an effective long-term strategic plan for supporting and growing tourism in the province, especially as the industry recovers from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” stated one of the three AG reports.
“That report was great,” Siegwart says. “They interviewed all the right stakeholders, and what you got what a comprehensive set of recommendations.” Behind the scenes, he says, the right people are taking the auditor general’s recommendations seriously — but it will take time to make the kind of large structural changes that are needed.
While the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Sport was required to review and comment on the AG’s findings as part of the audit process, it did not release a statement in response to the publication. Lumsden has not addressed the audits in the house in the months since, though he has made remarks on cultural funding, the AGO strike, and the Grey Cup.
The recent provincial budget didn’t include any major increases in tourism funding, says Siegwart. On the other hand, he adds, “we have seen that the funding levels have been maintained, which is a good thing.”
Many other provincial decisions will affect tourism in some way, especially those related to public infrastructure. But “on tourism-specific initiatives, I think it’s fair to suggest the budget was pretty light,” says Safayeni. “We’re going to be looking for more on this front from the government.”
“Ontario has a very dynamic and robust tourism and hospitality industry,” says Mark Bingeman, president of Bingemans, a multi-use entertainment park in Kitchener that has camping, bowling, a water park, and other features. “But there is no question that there needs to be more support in driving more growth and more product development for us to compare to other jurisdictions.”
Bingemans is a multi-use entertainment park in Kitchener. (Facebook)
The majority of Ontario’s tourism operators are small businesses like Zaverucha’s. They’ve been most deeply affected by the turbulence of the past few years, says Siegwart. Marcil agrees, saying this season and next will be essential for her smaller members. Based on what she’s hearing from them, she says that “it’s going to take about five years to get back to the way it needs to look, to get everything back up to snuff and maybe have a little bit of growth.”
TVO Today also reached out to Indigenous Tourism Ontario for comment but did not hear back by publication time.
For now, Zaverucha is watching the weather report and hoping for good fortune. “I just heard CBC Radio saying that the forest fires this spring are going to be as bad as last spring,” he says. At press time, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry reports that there are two active forest fires burning in the province.
He has five people signed up for the spring bear hunt — far fewer than the 20 to 25 he usually had before the COVID-19 pandemic. “People have changed, big time,” he says. “It’s not like it was before. People are watching their money and watching where they go and what they do.”
For her membership as a whole, “I think this year is absolutely going to be critical,” says Marcil. She’s most worried about 30 per cent of her members — roughly 70 businesses — that are “going to really struggle,” she says.
In the meantime, Zaverucha is thinking about getting out of the business in a few years. “I have some health problems,” he says. “I figure a couple more years and it’ll be time to think about doing something else.”
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