LILLEY: What qualifies Jagmeet Singh to run Canada’s top tourism office?
· Toronto Sun
Destination Canada is the $142-million-a-year agency responsible for marketing Canada to the world. Yet Mark Carney’s government appears poised to appoint Jagmeet Singh , a man with no meaningful tourism or marketing experience, to lead it.
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CTV broke the news on Thursday with industry insiders blasting the appointment.
“This is an insult both to the industry and to the organization itself,” one industry insider told CTV. “This is not a roving diplomatic appointment. This is a marketing organization that is responsible for $1 billion worth of economic activity in Canada.”
A big job with big economic stakes
Tourism is a massive industry. International visitors spend more than $30 billion annually in Canada and the sector accounts for close to 2% of GDP. Which raises an obvious question: What exactly makes Jagmeet Singh qualified to lead Destination Canada ?
He doesn’t have the business experience. He doesn’t have the marketing experience. This is a man who spent a few years as a criminal defence lawyer before becoming a politician and eventually the leader of Canada’s federal NDP.
Selling Canada after years of criticizing it
Will he take the same stance in marketing Canada abroad as he took as NDP leader?
“There’s no question about it,” Singh said when asked in 2019 whether Canada was a racist country.
In 2020, he spoke of “Indigenous people being beaten up and brutalized” and said that “Black people are being killed and brutalized in Canada.”
Now he’s going to be the man sent around the world to tell people to come here, to this supposedly racist hellhole where, according to his own past comments, they might get “brutalized” while spending their tourism dollars.
None of this makes any sense.
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau might have felt obliged to reward the NDP leader who kept his minority government alive. Carney has no such obligation. If he makes this appointment, Canadians deserve to know why.
Even among New Democrats, Singh has a reputation for being lazy, for not putting in the effort and for not getting the job done.
Yet this is the man the Carney Liberals want to sell Canada to the world. He couldn’t even sell his own party to voters when the Liberals were incredibly unpopular.
If Singh were qualified for this job and a fully partisan Liberal, then I’d take no issue with it. Partisan appointments are part of our system and a government elected by the people should be able to appoint those who agree with it with one caveat: The person must be qualified.
Singh isn’t a Liberal and he isn’t qualified, which makes this appointment puzzling.
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Why Destination Canada matters
While some will dismiss this posting, they shouldn’t. As head of Destination Canada, the president and CEO makes decisions on Canada’s global advertising buys.
Destination Canada’s leadership makes consequential decisions. Which markets deserve more investment? Should Canada devote more resources to attracting visitors from China, India or Europe? Which new airline routes should receive promotional support?
Beyond insulting Canada, what experience does Singh have?
“The fight for global tourism dollars is a real fight. We have to compete with all of these places,” one industry official said while reacting to Singh’s appointment.
Marsha Walden, who recently stepped down as president and CEO of Destination Canada, brought decades of marketing and tourism experience to the role. Her counterparts in countries like the United States, France, Britain, Japan and Australia also come from tourism, marketing, business or destination-management backgrounds.
Singh’s resume contains none of those qualifications.
Tourism is a serious industry that generates billions of dollars in economic activity. If Carney fills one of its most important leadership positions based on politics rather than qualifications, it will be difficult to take his promises of economic competence seriously .