Canada has launched a recent drive to get more overseas tourists to visit the country. Yet staffing shortages, wildfires and a spat with China will not make the job straightforward.

“You can discover about nature, indigenous population and our history,” says tour navigator Jack Rivers.

These are three reasons why he thinks more people should receive a chance on holidaying in Canada.

Mr Rivers, who is indigenous, leads organised walks around Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island, in Ontario.

It’s an unspoiled area, where dense forests line the shore of Lake Huron.

The walking tours are part of Wiikwemkoong Tourism, an indigenous tourism organisation that teaches visitors about native history and the land.

Mr Rivers says his job is “great”, but he admits that it is not for everyone. “It’s not an 8-4 job,” he says, adding that “it relies on people working weekends and being away from their household”.

Aa a outcome, Wikwemikong Tourism has struggled to retain staff, a issue that’s reflected across a Canada-wide tourism sector still said to be short of hundreds of thousands of workers.

These staffing shortfalls will have to be addressed if the Canadian government is successful in its recent drive to boost visitor numbers to the country.

The push, led by government body goal Canada, comes as visitor numbers to Canada have failed to recover post-Covid to their 2019 peak of 22 million people. Last year the total was 18.3 million, 17% lower.

The recent way called A globe Of chance, aims to boost turnover from Canada’s tourism sector to $CA160bn ($116bn; £89bn) by 2030, up from $CA109bn last year.

It also wants to view Canada become the globe’s seventh most-visited country, up from the current 13th place.

More than 3,000km (1864 miles) west of Manitoulin Island, sits the popular tourist town of Jasper in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains.

Back in July, a wildfire dubbed “the biggest in the region for a century” destroyed a third of the town’s buildings.

One of those hit was Maligne Lodge, a hotel that has been welcoming guests since the 1960s. Owner Karyn Decore says the fire was “devastating”.

“There is a lot to do, but I try and focus on what I have to do today, and leave tomorrow to tomorrow,” she says.

Thankfully for Ms Decore, Maligne Lodge was insured, and she hopes to rebuild it before next summer. But how long will it receive for all the other hotels in the town to reopen?

“Jasper is an international tourist goal, and the hotels here are booked 100% between 1 June and the middle of October,” she explains. “We’re already sold out for next summer. The test is that not as many people will be able to visit Jasper until all the hotels are rebuilt, and we don’t recognize how long that will receive.”

Another large issue for the Canadian tourism sector is a fall in the number of Chinese visitors.

Relations between the two countries have been fraught since a diplomatic row back in 2018.

That year the chief monetary officer of Chinese telecoms firm Huawei was arrested in Canada in response to a US warrant. China responded by detaining two Canadian citizens living in China on spying charges.

The trio were not released until 2021.

Some analysts declare this row is a main rationale why, following the Covid pandemic, China still hasn’t put Canada back on its list of approved countries for Chinese citizens to visit.

James Griffiths, Asia correspondent for Canadian newspaper Globe & Mail, says that “the freeze in bilateral relations [between China and Canada] still hasn’t really recovered”.

He also points to the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which means that Western airlines can no longer fly through Russian airspace.

“A lot of North American and European carriers have really struggled with routes to China because they can’t fly through Russia or over Russia, and by avoiding Russia, you add about three hours to the flight period, which is more expensive for the airlines and onerous for passengers.”

Canada’s Minister of Tourism Soraya Martinez Ferrada is the politician in fee of bringing more tourists to the country. She tells the BBC that she also wants them “to remain longer” and “spend more money”.

When asked about the drop in Chinese visitors, she says Canada is concentrated on its largest markets, Europe and the US. Though “with Chinese visitors, we view that Canada is still of yield to them,” she adds.

Tackling climate transformation is another of the government’s priorities, which Ms Martinez Ferrada accepts is an “existential threat to Canadian tourism”.

Yet Canada, she says, is a large country, and “it’s not the whole country that’s on fire”. “We have to make sure travellers comprehend that there might be threats around climate transformation, but there are so many other places to discover that aren’t impacted.”

As for staffing shortages hampering firms like Wiikwemkoong Tourism, she admits: “I do ponder that we require to do a better job of promoting the sector and the career opportunities that we have.

“Having the skills and having the training to do that, I ponder it’s significant.”