Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has not said much recently, but the number of Canadians visiting his state has hit a post-pandemic low. The drop was 26 per cent. The Canadian travel boycott is hitting Florida where it hurts: in the pocketbook. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on November 17, 2025.

OTTAWA—Canadians are voting with their feet. And America is not on the ballot.

Ten months into the mandate of United States President Donald Trump, the number of Canadians who visit the U.S. has slumped dramatically.

Just last week, the United States Travel Association reported a 3.2 per cent decline in international tourism spending in their country, for a loss of $5.7-billion compared to the previous year.

Canadians account for approximately 30 per cent of all foreign travel to the U.S., but we are not the only country that is putting the brakes on American tourism.

Canadians have good reason to boycott. In the last 10 months, the American president has threatened our economy, insulted our prime minister, backtracked on trade agreements, and continuously repeated he wants to annex our country.

As for other foreign travellers, the crackdown on migrants carried out by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has sent a global message that people can be rounded up at will.

A Canadian died while in ICE custody recently. Unfortunately, his sad story reflects that of hundreds of others who have been arrested without due process and thrown into detention centres hundreds of kilometres from where they were located.

Canada and the U.S. used to be very proud that we shared the world’s longest open border, defended only by smiles and a few border crossings. Those smiles are gone.

Canadian snowbirds who still visit the U.S. now have to be fingerprinted and registered as aliens.

Likewise, the cost of visiting the U.S. has jumped dramatically for some other international visitors with the introduction of the new $250 “visa integrity fee,” making America one of the most expensive destinations in the world.

When Canadians originally threatened a boycott, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis treated it as a joke, saying that with 3.3 million Canucks visiting his state in 2024, it wasn’t much of a boycott.

During an address to lawmakers in Tallahassee, DeSantis joked that Canadians were all coming down “to get a glimpse of what a Stanley Cup winning hockey team actually looks like.”

But the joke is now on him.

For the first time this year, the U.S. is going to move from a surplus to a deficit when it comes to how much travel money is spent in the country.

The United States Travel Association is predicting a total travel deficit of nearly US$70 billion. Canadians represent almost one-third of the travellers to the U.S., so our boycott is definitely not worth laughing at.

The projected deficit is caused by a 3.2 per cent decline in international tourism spending in the country, a loss that the association attributes largely to the drop in Canadian visitor numbers.

In the latest data from October, the number of Canadians travelling to the states by air dropped 24 per cent, and by land it decreased 30 per cent.

A recent Angus Reid poll surveyed 1,607 Canadians. Some 70 per cent said they were not comfortable travelling to the U.S. Their primary explanations were to stand up for Canada, oppose America’s political climate, and avoid border security concerns.

I was invited a few months ago to participate in a bilateral trade panel at the University of Southern California.

When I declined, citing security reasons, the organizing committee said it was not surprised as other Canadians had bowed out for the same reason.

The refusal to travel to the U.S. has opened up opportunities elsewhere. Statistics Canada recently reported a seven per cent increase in travellers heading to Europe.

Just recently, KLM/Air France announced a 30 per cent hike in their bookings.

Meanwhile, American politicians are doing their best to encourage an end to the boycott.

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently participated in a “California loves Canada” promotional campaign designed to encourage Canadians to reconsider the boycott.

Several governors joined in a recent Canadian tourism trade mission. Some states are offering promotions and “Welcome Canada” rebates in an effort to bring Canadians back.

Meanwhile, American visits to Canada are rebounding. In October, there was a one per cent reduction from 2024 travel in the same time period.

Florida’s DeSantis has not said much recently, but in the second quarter of this year, the number of Canadians visiting his state hit a post-pandemic low. The drop was 26 per cent.

Miami-Dade County has reported that spending by Canadians fell almost 13 per cent.

The Canadian travel boycott is hitting Florida where it hurts: in the pocketbook.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on January 13, 2025.

OTTAWA—Enemy of the state: that is the only way to characterize the threat of Canadian “economic annexation” by American president-elect Donald Trump.

His so-called joke about Canada joining the United States is turning deadly serious.

It is a threat that one would expect from a dictator. It is not a threat that one could expect from the leader of our democratically-elected neighbour, the United States.

All bets are off with the Trump claim that Canada should join the U.S. in the formation of a single country.

He even has the nerve to post a map of Canada absorbed into the United States, with the stars and stripes flag covering all the way from Mexico to the Arctic.

Trump has ruled out military force as a method of annexation, speaking instead about economic annexation.

He continues to falsely claim that Canada receives hundreds of millions in subsidies in America.

He wants to end auto, milk, and lumber imports from Canada, claiming that his country doesn’t need any of our goods to survive.

However, Trump did not mention electricity or oil and gas, Canadian exports that America needs to keep its economy running.

Trump also reached out to support the candidacy of Pierre Poilievre as a future prime minister, saying the pair are on the same political wave length.

Poilievre moved quickly to distance himself from Trump, stating the obvious: Canada will never become the 51st state.

But Conservative allies like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith plan to attend the president’s inauguration on Jan. 20 in celebration of his victory.

The Alberta premier has also refused to join Ontario Premier Doug Ford in denying the export of energy to the U.S. Ford promised to retaliate on tariffs by refusing to export energy south of the border, but Smith quickly rebutted that Ford did not speak for her province.

However, that happened before Trump launched his campaign to annex Canada.

Smith would be hard-pressed to explain her presence at Trump’s inauguration when the leader she plans to celebrate is claiming publicly he will buy Greenland, annex Canada, and take over the Panama Canal.

While Trump’s threats are being widely covered here at home, they won’t make the news very long in the U.S.

Ford was supposed to be interviewed on the subject by CNN, but his presence was cancelled when the California wildfires replaced Canada’s annexation in the news cycle.

While Americans may gloss over Trumpian machinations, we cannot afford to do so.

We need to get tough on as many fronts as possible. One of those could be a refusal to allow the president to enter Canada for the G7 meeting in June because of his recent federal criminal conviction.

Diplomacy could override that refusal, but diplomacy is also a two-way street.

Unless Trump issues a clarification regarding his crazy annexation claims, he should be kept out of the country.

Words have consequences, and the words of a bully need to be met with consequences.

Some might argue that barring Trump from the country would simply poke the bear.

But stroking the bear has not gotten us anywhere.

Peter Donolo, former prime ministerial communications adviser to then-prime minister Jean Chrétien, recently wrote an opinion piece saying that we can’t treat the Trump threats as a joke.

Instead, we need to act with political muscle. That muscle should include testing Trump in international fora.

The Organization of American States is where the unilateral declaration of annexation theory could be tested. Last year, the OAS issued a condemnation of Venezuela’s move to annex the Essequibo region of Guyana.

Canada, and the rest of the Americas, has an interest in dampening down Trump’s rhetoric.

Annexation is not legal, which is why the world has been working to get Russian troops out of Ukraine.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization should also be asked to take a stand on the American president-elect’s annexation ruminations.

The United Nations could also be an appropriate forum for condemnation of Trump’s hostile annexation rhetoric.

These claims need to be fought at the highest level of international diplomacy, including the potential for legal remedies.

The International Court of Justice should be asked for its opinion as to the legality of Trump’s annexation threats. It has a mandate to give advice on international legal issues. What could be more pressing than a claim that one democratic country will undertake ‘economic annexation’ of another?

Trump must be taken seriously. It is time to fight a bully by destroying his bully pulpit.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.