Open this photo in gallery:
As the trade war with the U.S continues, Canadians are quietly asserting that business as usual is over – driving long-lasting changes to both countries’ tourism industries.flyzone/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian.
Summertime, and the living isn’t easy for U.S. workers dependent on Canadian tourism. Boycotting travel is a trade irritant unlike any other, and one the American ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, sheepishly raised during an interview with CTV earlier this month in Vancouver.
Canadians are exercising this political defiance in opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada. Leger polling suggests 67 per cent of those who decided to boycott travel to the U.S. in 2026 have done so because of the political climate and tensions between the two countries. An expensive U.S. dollar also makes it easier to say no.
Canadians are quietly asserting that business as usual is over. So too is politics as usual. Pro forma anti-Americanism this is not. Canadians are driving long-lasting structural changes to both the American and Canadian tourism industries.
Canadians flock to overseas travel as U.S. boycott deepens
The top source of tourists to the U.S. in 2024 was Canada. We spent US$20-billion there that year. Statistics Canada reports that roughly three million Canadians travelled to America by air or land in March, 2024 alone. This March, that number was down by almost a million.
U.S. duty-free shops near border towns were the first to feel the Canadian punch to their pocketbooks, reporting material revenue shortfalls almost immediately after President Trump’s April 2, 2025, “Liberation Day” tariff announcements.
This May, the University of Toronto’s School of Cities released a study that used anonymous Canadian cellphone data in 267 U.S. cities between last April and March of this year. The study revealed a 42-per cent year-over-year median decline in cross-border trips from Canada to U.S. cities during that period.
This comes at a great loss to the American economy. Forbes, using U.S. Travel Association data, estimates it to be a cost of roughly US$4.5-billion ($6.3-billion Canadian) so far, causing an estimated loss of about 300,000 jobs. This is potentially the largest decline in tourism arrivals from a single country – Canada – in U.S. history.
These provinces are boycotting U.S. travel the hardest
T.J. Rule, who owns the Toronto-based Golf Away Tours, can attest to what Canadian defiance looks like in his company’s travel bookings. In 2024, more than 13 per cent of his golf-tour bookings were to the U.S. This year, U.S. bookings amount to 0.05 per cent of the total. Advanced bookings for 2027? Zero.
“We find that people still want warm temperatures, so they are typically looking at Portugal and Spain as two of the most popular alternatives,” said Mr. Rule in an interview.
New travel patterns show up in changes to airline capacities. In the first quarter of 2026, Canadian airlines reduced U.S.-bound flight capacity by almost 10 per cent, totalling 450,000 seats, according to OAG, a global travel data provider. Air Transat, the Quebec-based charter airline, has suspended all its U.S. flights this summer.
A good portion of this capacity is being redirected to Mexico – Cancun in particular. The big winner isn’t Mexico, however, though it’s doing well.
It’s Canada.
Editorial Board: The U.S. travel slump can be Canada’s bump
Between May and August last year Canadians spent a record $59-billion travelling to domestic destinations, a 6-per-cent increase over 2024. The extra money is giving rise to new industries, such as agri-tourism driven by farmers converting parts of their properties into hotel rooms and diversifying their revenue in the process.
A Leger poll taken earlier this year shows that 67 per cent of Canadians planning to vacation intended to travel in Canada, versus 49 per cent in 2025.
Destination Canada, our country’s national tourism organization, projects that this structural change, combined with growing tourism from other countries, will boost the economy by almost $141-billion in 2026, an increase of 6 per cent over last year.
Looking for summer vacation ideas close to home? Globe readers share their favourite spots
Americans are contributing to this traffic. They are visiting Canada in larger numbers, despite our absence from the U.S., and are forecasted to increase their tourist spending here by more than 5 per cent annually, according to Destination Canada.
In the years to come, the consequences for tourism will be substantial. “By 2035,” Destination Canada reports, “total tourism revenue is projected to reach $216.3 billion, up 67 per cent from 2024 levels.”
With our elbows up and luggage in hand, Canadians are conveying to the U.S. administration what diplomacy forbids our political leaders from saying.