Employees at Destination Canada received bonuses and pay raises in 2020 and 2021 while the tourism industry shut down during COVID-19, records show.
There were 84 Destination Canada employees who received a bonus in 2020, with costs totalling $617,095, according to records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) through Access to Information requests. In 2021, there were 92 employees that received a bonus, costing $604,153.
Federal director of the CTF Franco Terrazzano said a federal Crown corporation dedicated to promoting tourism shouldn’t be giving employees bonuses and pay raises while Canada’s tourism industry wasn’t allowed to host tourists.
“It’s tone deaf for Destination Canada to hand out bonuses and pay raises while the industry it’s supposed to promote was shut down,” Terrazzano said in a statement.
“Federal Crown corporations should be sharing in the tough times, not handing out bonuses and pay raises while their neighbours outside government take cuts and lose their job.”
Destination Canada is a federal Crown corporation whose objective is “marketing Canada nationally and abroad.”
The records show that 87 percent of Destination Canada employees received a bonus in 2020, while 76 percent received a bonus in 2021.
Among its executives, the average bonus was $32,652 in 2020.
Destination Canada said it reduced bonus pay for its executives in 2021 “in recognition of the adverse impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry.” Bonus pay averaged $16,126 for each executive in 2021.
Another 79 Destination Canada employees received a pay raise in 2020 and 63 employees received a pay raise in 2021, totalling $349,309 over the two years. No employees received a pay cut.
In March 2020, the government prohibited “any foreign national, including U.S. nationals, from entering Canada in all modes of travel (air, land, rail and marine) for optional or discretionary purposes.”
More than a year later, in August 2021, the federal government began allowing fully-vaccinated American citizens to enter Canada for “non-essential travel.”
Canada’s tourism spending was cut in half in 2020 due to these measures.
“In 2020, almost 900,000 jobs were lost at the height of the crisis, representing 43 per cent of all tourism employment,” according to Destination Canada. “In 2021, tourism employment over the first 10 months of the year remained 21 per cent below pre-pandemic 2019 levels – a loss of 360,000 jobs.”
Destination Canada received $121 million from taxpayers in 2021-22 and $96 million in 2020-21, according to its most recent annual report.
