Last week, the provincial government released its 2024 Budget, entitled Building a Better Ontario—a budget that continues to reflect the Province’s immediate priorities to build new infrastructure and expand and refurbish existing assets.
This year’s budget places a large focus on the housing crisis, labour crisis, and infrastructure deficits which have been impacting Ontario’s competitiveness, economic growth outlook, and quality of life for Ontarians. The budget reflects key asks championed within TIAO’s pre-budget submission, including workforce training, housing, infrastructure upgrades, and beverage alcohol tax reform. Tourism as an industry does not feature prominently within the budget. However, TIAO sees the budget’s broader investments as a move in the right direction to support the regrowth, competitiveness, and capacity of local visitor economies, laying the foundation for future dedicated tourism investments. These broader investments include:
Sustainable Growth
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Proposing to eliminate the 6.1% tax at on-site winery retail stores. TIAO welcomes this proposal, which is on top of the Province’s 2-year freeze on the beer basic tax and its ongoing review of beverage alcohol taxes. TIAO has been advocating for beverage alcohol tax reform to support the competitiveness of Ontario wineries, breweries, and cideries and their capacity to not only deliver high quality product that enhances visitor experiences but to attract visitors to rural and culinary destinations across the province.
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Consulting on a new Rural Economic Development Strategy that will inform additional policies to support the agriculture and food sector and rural Ontario. Feeding into the Rural Economic Development Strategy, TIAO recently participated in the Rural Economic Summit consultation held by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, where we highlighted the role of agritourism in farm succession and rural economic sustainability. TIAO aims to see a Rural Economic Development Strategy that supports the growth of agritourism in rural destinations.
Labour & Workforce
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Investing an additional $100 million in the Skills Development Fund (SDF) Training Stream, which responds to TIAO’s advocacy on the need for ongoing investments in SDF to enable our industry to continue developing and delivering sector-led training that meets the recruitment, retention, and skills development needs of small and medium-sized tourism businesses. This is a well-timed investment given the fiercer competition that small and medium-sized tourism businesses face in recruiting and retaining staff amidst federal policy changes (e.g., international student cap) that have reduced the pool of available talent. In the wake of these policy changes, equipping operators with the tools they need to reskill and upskill staff has become even more important.
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Providing an additional $10 million in funding through the Small, Northern and Rural Grant for colleges and the Northern Ontario Grant for universities in 2024-25.
Infrastructure
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Investing $1 billion for the new Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program to support core projects and servicing to enable housing for growing and developing communities.
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Investing an additional $152 million over three years towards various supportive housing initiatives designed to support people facing unstable housing conditions and dealing with mental health and addictions challenges, and investing an additional $124 million over three years for the Addictions Recovery Fund to enable access to specialized services for mental health and addictions treatment. These measures respond to TIAO’s ongoing advocacy for increased funding for supportive housing for vulnerable populations as well as addressing the impacts of mental health and addictions challenges within communities and destinations across the Province.
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Launching a new $200 million Community Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund to support new and revitalized sport, recreation, and community facilities. The application-based fund will invest in new and revitalized sport, recreation, and community facilities for youth and families.
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Allocating an initial $3 billion to the new Building Ontario Fund, a new infrastructure bank which will support the financing and building of critical infrastructure projects across the province. The fund will act as a tool to attract capital in order to help meet the future infrastructure needs of Ontario. Priority areas include energy infrastructure, affordable housing, municipal and community infrastructure, and transportation—areas for which TIAO has strongly advocated.
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Allocating an additional $1.3 billion this year to improve high-speed internet access across Ontario, which answers TIAO’s call for provincial and federal governments to deliver on their commitment to bring high-speed internet to underserved rural and remote communities.
Tourism is a driver of the social, cultural, and economic infrastructure that powers communities across Ontario and the provincial economy. To fully leverage the economic potential of Ontario’s tourism industry, TIAO encourages the Province to adopt bold, targeted measures to address some of the longstanding challenges currently facing local visitor economies. Outlined in our pre-budget submission, these include:
Sustainable Growth
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Implementing an Event Development Fund to support business events, major events, and sporting events during the bidding process.
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Reintroducing the Marquee Event Fund as a separate funding stream (with a separate envelope of funding) for large scale festivals and events while reconfiguring Experience Ontario as a funding stream for small and medium sized festivals and events.
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Implementing craft beer and craft cider tax reform to ensure that Ontario craft beer and craft cider can compete and thrive in an expanded marketplace.
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Implementing Municipal Accommodation Tax (MAT) reform to ensure that the MAT continues to meet its intended objectives of supporting Ontario’s visitor economies.
Labour & Workforce:
Here are the policy changes we’re continuing to push for as tourism employers face a more competitive labour market:
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Returning to multi-year workforce development contracts for strategic, provincial, industry workforce projects that support retention and skills development.
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Creating customized workforce/labour programming streams in the Skills Development Fund for small and medium-sized businesses.
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Amending the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) to include TEER 4 and 5 in qualifying experience and job offers.
Infrastructure:
In addition to the following asks, TIAO has convened its first of many to come Regional Transportation Advisory calls to solicit direct member feedback on the transportation infrastructure challenges facing destinations across the province. With worsening connectivity between communities, this channel will become an important sounding board for TIAO’s transportation recommendations, which will feed into our advocacy efforts and future budget submissions.
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Establishing dedicated provincial funding streams to support and incentivize the local development and delivery of private sector workforce and attainable housing solutions.
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Working with delivery partners to facilitate the expansion of EV charging infrastructure across rural Ontario to meet future visitor demand.
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Provide private motor coach operators access to Ontario transit funding programs to assist in reconnecting Ontario’s communities.
TIAO will continue to push for our key asks in meetings with ministries throughout the year; at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference in August with our tourism delegation; and at our annual Queen’s Park Lobby Day in September with TIAO members representing DMOs, RTOs, sector associations, and tourism operators. In addition to these advocacy efforts, TIAO will be working with its membership to cultivate opportunities for economic growth and innovation to support the vibrancy of Ontario’s visitor destinations. TIAO remains focused on looking ahead and with greater precision on much-needed tourism industry actions.