The Fallout Continues

I admit to taking a certain pleasure in reporting bad news about the U.S. That it is being sanctioned by Canadians for its abysmal treatment of such a reliable trading partner seems only right and just.

Although it is not just Canada boycotting travel to the U.S., we are a sizable source of their tourism woes.

International visitor spending in the U.S. is expected to drop by $12.5 billion (U.S.), falling to $169 billion by the end of 2025, down from $181 billion last year, according to new data from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). This marks a 7-per-cent decline from 2024 and a 22 per cent drop compared to the last peak of American tourism in 2019.

The U.S., home to the world’s largest travel and tourism sector, is the only country among 184 economies analyzed by WTTC and Oxford Economics that is projected to see a decline in international visitor spending this year.

The U.S., in my view, has been a dangerous place to visit for many years, its love of guns and violence and a deeply rooted suspicion of "the other" overshadowing its many attractions. The realization of that danger has become more pronounced since Don Trump began his second term as president.

 ... hundreds of thousands of Canadians are deciding not to vacation or take day trips to the U.S. Incidents like the detention of European tourists at U.S. borders and a new policy requiring foreign nationals staying over 30 days to register have further discouraged international travel to America.

”(The decline) is not related to the economy in general,” said Frédéric Dimanche, director of Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. “It’s really more a question of attitudes towards the U.S. and Trump, whether (travellers) are against the policies, against the politics, whether they’re concerned about the security issues when crossing the border.” 

It would seem that this decline will take a long time, if ever, to reverse.

The WTTC  [World Travel and Tourism Council] forecasts it will take until at least 2030 for the U.S. tourism industry, worth nearly $2.6 trillion, to recover to pre-COVID levels.

Dimanche said consumer perceptions of the Trump administration won’t change over time, and it will take years for the tourism industry to rebuild tourist confidence.

Being a relatively safe country, one hopes that Canada will position itself to be an attractive travel alternative. There is much to be said for a holidaying in a locale where every second thought isn't for the personal safety of oneself and one's family.

 

A Demonic Presence

Although I don't believe in him, there are times when I think the devil is alive and well,  wielding his chicanery from the White House. While I realize such hyperbolic assertions are probably unworthy of this blog, consider the 'evidence'.

The devil is traditionally depicted as the sower of discord. Disunity, division, suspicion, hatred and chaos are his main calling cards, withs goodness equated with weakness. As Shakespeare said, "...goodness to the vile seem[s] vile". There are countless examples to demonstrate this dominant ethos in Donald Trump's Amerika, but the following encapsulates it nicely:

At the end of the report, Andrea Mitchell speculates that Elon Musk might have influenced the decision to 'rescue' these Afrikaners. Given that Trump is shunning all other such attempts at assuaging the suffering of others (mainly non-whites, by the way), I think the explanation is simpler: he is appealing to his racist base and sending the powerful, malignant message that people of colour have little value. Again, what better way is there to sow discord than that?

How are churches feeling about the Afrikaners? Well, Episcopalians want no part of them.

The Episcopal Church has severed a four-decade-old relationship with the federal government, citing its moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa the Trump administration had declared refugees.

The hearty ‘nee’ (‘no’ in Afrikaans) from the religious denomination marks an extraordinary act of protest. The Episcopal Church long had participated in resettling refugees fleeing persecution and war in their home countries, Religion News Service reported. 

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Sean More, said this:

Rowe told his fellow believers that it had been “painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years.”

“I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country,” he continued. 

And, of course, as the NBC report makes clear, Trump is bringing down the hammer on most other groups.

The order comes even as the White House has executed sweeping actions to remove undocumented immigrants from the global south, sometimes scooping up permanent U.S. citizens in its net.

Fair-minded people worldwide are not fooled by Trump and his divisive, diabolical tactics. The Evil One (if I may be permitted a bit of literary licence), however, must be laughing with delight.

UPDATE: I came across a paragraph in an article by Bruce Arthur about the reinstatement of the late Pete Rose to the MLB, thereby rescinding a 'permanent' ban and making him eligible to be considered for Hall of Fame induction. The following, I think, captures the morally tortured tenor of the times:

This is a time of vice and wickedness, however, and a time of freedom from consequences for bad behaviour. It’s also a time of compliance, for some. The American government is making flying more dangerous, education more stupid, health more precarious, scams more rewarding and corruption more common. [MLB commissioner Rob]Manfred, notably, met with U.S. President Donald Trump on April 17. After Rose’s death, Trump brayed that Rose should get a complete pardon. Trump’s brain is stuck in the 1980s in many respects, but he also is attracted to anti-virtue like a fly to feces. 

Keeping Up The Pressure

Despite their president's avowals that Canada has nothing the U.S. needs,  many Americans are discovering (much to their shock, I'm sure) otherwise. As I have written before, Trump's threats to our sovereignty, his open contempt for our country, his extortionate, Mafia-like tariffs have all stiffened Canadians' resolve to assert their national pride and show their anger toward the U.S.

In addition to widespread boycotts of American products, perhaps the most obvious and stinging rebuke is Canadians' ongoing refusal to travel to that country.

Travel by Canadians coming back from trips to the U.S. dropped sharply in April, according to preliminary data from Statistics Canada.

Return trips by Canadians coming back from the U.S. by air dropped by 19.9 per cent, and return via land borders dropped by a whopping 35.2 per cent compared to April of last year.

Canadian return trips by air from the U.S. in March were down 13.5 per cent compared to March 2024, and return trips by car for that month were down 31.9 per cent.

That decline has led to airlines making big schedule changes.

WestJet is pausing nine routes between the U.S. and Canada as demand dampens for travel between the two countries.

A spokesperson for the airline confirmed the following suspensions in an email to CBC News:

• Vancouver-Austin (May through October)
• Calgary-Fort Lauderdale; Edmonton-Chicago; St. John's-Orlando; and Winnipeg-Orlando (June)
• Kelowna-Seattle-Tacoma; and Winnipeg-Los Angeles (June through August)
• Edmonton-Atlanta; and Winnipeg-Las Vegas (July through August)

Westjet is not the only airline making adjustments. 

Toronto-based Porter Airlines ...  told CTVNews.ca that 80 per cent of total network capacity during the summer peak period is now dedicated to domestic flights. The figure is up from a previously planned 75 per cent.

Westjet is also scheduling more domestic flights, as we opt to patronize our own country. 

Air Canada is a bit more circumspect in discussing its changes.

When asked whether it was changing its routes or flights, Air Canada told CTVNews.ca in an email Friday that it is “adjusting capacity” to U.S. sun destinations, using smaller aircraft and reducing routes in response to the changing market demand.

“We continue to monitor demand and will make adjustments accordingly,” wrote the country’s biggest air carrier. It also said it adjusted its non-stop Vancouver-Washington Dulles flights to connect in Toronto.

It said it has experienced “some softening in the transborder market,” with bookings on the cross-border market overall down about 10 per cent from April to September.

The Montreal-based airline reduced capacity for routes to U.S. leisure destinations such as Florida, Las Vegas and Arizona, Bloomberg reported March 28.

Our product and travel boycotts, by all reports, are having tangible effects. We should take satisfaction in inflicting economic pain on the giant to the south.  The bully may be much bigger than us, but our solid, principled ways of standing up to it should gladden the patriotic hearts of all Canadians.

 

  

 

 

 

A Chill Comes To The Neigbourhood

That chill would be the one brought by ICE agents, who descended upon a Worcester Massachusetts neighbourhood to arrest an 'undesirable'.

Police say two people were arrested when a crowd of people tried to interfere with an ICE operation in Worcester on Thursday. The incident has generated a lot of anger in the city.

Crowds swarmed around federal agents on Eureka Street as they took a woman into custody. 

A witness describes what she saw. "The mom as she was being detained too, she was screaming, I don't know if she was being hurt as she was handcuffed, but she was truly screaming," Dali RaRocha said. "Those are the screams I have truly engrained in my ears right now." 

The scene was captured on video: 

Scenes like this are becoming commonplace in Amerika, and no one seems to be immune, as New Jersey's mayor found out recently, arrested for allegedly trespassing at an ICE facility:

Newark, New Jersey mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Elizabeth on Friday as the mayor and members of Congress joined demonstrations demanding answers from Donald Trump’s administration about the conditions inside, marking a major escalation of immigration protests surrounding the facility.

Videos from outside the facility shows a chaotic scene with masked federal officers pushing against a crowd in the detention center’s parking lot as Baraka is shoved towards the building and then placed in handcuffs.

New Jersey’s interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba — Trump’s personal attorney — accused the mayor of trespassing and ignoring warnings from federal law enforcement agents to leave.

Alina Habba,  a former Trump attorney and devout loyalist who is doing very well for herself (currently the interim State Attorney for New Jersey), issued a statement dripping with both irony and hypocrisy. She sanctimoniously intoned,

“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW”

Except her boss, of course. I'll leave it at that, as words often fail me when I try to describe the rapid and seemingly irrevocable devolution of the 'United' States into fear, suspicion, and anarchy. 

 

They Just Don't Get It

Maybe it's because they are the 'greatest' nation on earth, if not in the entire history of the world (he said sardonically). Perhaps  they are eternal optimists, or, more possibly, incredibly stupid (my pick). Whatever the explanation, the citizens of the United States of Amerika do not understand why the number of tourists visiting their country is plummeting.

Canadian travel to the U.S. has cratered after Trump took office. In March, trips made from Canada into the U.S. plummeted by nearly a million compared to the same time last year, comprising the second consecutive month of year-over-year decreases.

The real reason for that decline will be discussed a bit later, but the Americans are doing everything they can to reverse what for them is a disastrous economic trend. Despite Trump's recent and repeated declarations that the U.S. doesn't need anything from Canada, there are many who know otherwise.

For example, New York Congresswoman Elise Stephaniuk thinks that maybe Canadians are put off by the fact that they can't stay longer while visiting her land of milk and honey. She has a remedy, having introduced

the Canadian Snowbird Visa Act, a bipartisan bill to extend the duration Canadian citizens who own or lease a residence in the United States may stay—from 182 days to 240 days annually.

“Our neighbors to the north provide more visits to the United States than any other country, and they are critically important to North Country tourism and industry,” said Congresswoman Stefanik. “Providing Canadians who own homes and property in the United States with extra time to visit and boost our economy will help revive Canadian tourism to the United States.”

Under current U.S. immigration law, Canadian citizens can only stay in the United States for up to 182 days per year without a visa. The Canadian Snowbird Visa Act would allow eligible Canadians—aged 50 and over who either own or lease a U.S. residence—to extend their stay to up to 240 days annually.

Perhaps a little more grounded in reality is California Governor Gavin Newsom's appeal to Canadians: 

Speaking of California, Palm Springs is trying to entice Canadiana back:

Earlier this month, the city of Palm Springs, Calif., put up dozens of red banners that feature a heart with a Canadian flag nestled between the words “Palm Springs” and “Canada.”

“It was a way for us to say to the Canadians that are part of our community for so many months out of the year that we appreciate them, and in light of all the unrest and emotional up-and-down, that we’re standing by their side,” Palm Springs Mayor Ron deHarte told CTVNews.ca. “We will continue to support one another and welcome them back next season, or whenever the dust settles, and everybody feels comfortable to come back.”

All of these efforts miss a central point about a major factor, in addition to Canadian nationalistic fervour, inducing people to avoid travel to the U.S. THEY DON'T FEEL SAFE!

A Leger Marketing poll, conducted on behalf of the Association for Canadian Studies, made some interesting discoveries:

The survey of 1,626 Canadians found 52 per cent of people feel “it is no longer safe for all Canadians travelling to the United States.” Twenty-nine per cent disagreed with the sentiment and 19 per cent were unsure.

This belief was felt most strongly among respondents over 55 and in residents of Atlantic Canada, British Columbia and Ontario. People aged 18 to 54 and people in Alberta were less inclined to agree.

The dangers posed to Canadians by the U.S. has been well-known for many years, unless one has been living in a media vacuum. Finally, thanks to the hostile actions of our American 'neighbours', more and more of our people are recognizing the country for what it is: an incubator of anger, instability, violence  and death, the repercussions of which we can no longer turn a blind eye to.

UPDATE: This just in, apropos to everything.

 

His Genius For All To See

 I'm talking about Theo Moudakis here.

From The Big Leagues

 I think Theo Moudakis captures the Canadian zeitgeist here, don't you think?