In a rare reversal of trends, more Americans visit Canada by car than vice versa
As Canadian travel to the United States continues to decline, new data shows a notable tipping point: More Americans visited Canada this July than Canadians did the United States, in a reversal not seen in years.
Statistics Canada's latest figures show that U.S. residents made 1.8 million trips into Canada by automobile last month, with only 1.7 million Canadian return trips from the United States.
Canadian trips to the U.S. have outnumbered U.S.-Canada trips every July since before the COVID-19 pandemic, until now.
July travel has declined in both directions since last year, with U.S. visitor totals down 7.4 per cent and Canadian return trips plunging 36.9 per cent, down for six and seven months in a row, respectively.
'Recent data on foreign travel suggest that Canadians' travel sentiment toward their southern neighbour has been shifting in early 2025,' a StatCan report from earlier this summer reads. 'It is currently unclear whether the change is temporary or part of a more permanent shift.'
Girl Guides of Canada recently announced it would suspend excursions to the United States for an unspecified period of time, in a decision the organization said was linked to U.S. President Donald Trump's tightening border control policies.
'This decision is rooted in our commitment to inclusivity and the safety of all our members,' Girl Guides of Canada wrote in an email to CTV News.
'It was prompted by the recent restrictions put on equal entry into the United States, as some members may hold citizenship from non-Canadian countries and could be impacted by the restrictions.'
As for air travel, Canada has seen an increase in visitors, with 1.4 million non-residents arriving this July, up just over three per cent from the same time in 2024. While most of this growth came from overseas travellers, U.S. visitors by air also increased 0.7 per cent.
Overall, international arrivals to Canada are down 15.6 per cent from the same time last year, according to StatCan.
With files from CTV News' Spencer Van Dyk
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Globe and Mail
29 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
You can't fly sovereignty on foreign fuel
Omar Saleh is the chief operating officer at North Vector Dynamics. This week, China slapped a 75.8-per-cent preliminary anti-dumping duty on Canadian canola, threatening $5-billion a year in exports and putting the Prairie agricultural economy squarely in the crosshairs. Yet in this crisis lies an opportunity. The same crop now caught in a trade war could also be the key to fixing one of our biggest national security vulnerabilities. Canola has quietly become one of the most credible feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) – chemically identical to conventional jet fuel, yet with up to 90 per cent lower life-cycle emissions. It's a drop-in fuel – usable in current engines, aircraft and refuelling systems with no modifications. The U.S. Air Force flies on it. Lufthansa uses it regularly. NATO is preparing to deploy it. Canada isn't. We have committed to spending $38.6-billion on North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) modernization and Arctic deployments – without securing the fuel to support them. No strategic reserve. No domestic supply chain. No plan. Poilievre urges Ottawa to cancel BC Ferries loan in response to Chinese canola tariffs At Canada's most remote base, CFS Alert, it takes seven litres of fuel to deliver just one usable litre. In a crisis, that's a logistics choke point an adversary wouldn't even need to attack – just wait for the supply chain to strain and watch operations slow. This isn't a technical gap. It's industrial abdication. Canada has the tools to lead. New high-oil varieties can grow on Class 4 marginal lands – millions of acres across Saskatchewan and Alberta that aren't used currently for food crops. That means no pressure on food systems, and no need to convert premium farmland. That shift wasn't driven by marketing – it was earned through hard science, better crop genetics and proven refining results. What's more, Canada has a real shot at global leadership not only because of what we grow, but also what we can store. Alberta already has one of the most advanced carbon-capture networks in North America. Facilities such as Quest, and the provincewide trunk line that supports it, are exactly what will separate low-carbon SAF from the ultralow-carbon SAF needed to win international contracts. That infrastructure is already there. Put it together and the Prairies don't just have the feedstock. They have the land, the logistics, the refining and the emissions solution. No other country has all five. So why are we still acting like this is someone else's opportunity? The European Union and Britain are mandating SAF blending – 2 per cent by 2025, climbing to 70 per cent by 2050. The United States has committed billions through the Department of Energy, Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense. Yet Canada remains on the sidelines, siloing SAF under clean fuel programs, ignoring it in procurement and treating it as someone else's file. We've got more to lose than most. Almost a quarter of Canada's jet fuel is imported, leaving our defence and Arctic operations dependent on foreign supply chains that are vulnerable to global disruptions. This isn't about emissions – it's about operational readiness and supply chain control. Scaling SAF to 15 per cent of Canada's jet fuel use could generate $3-billion to $5-billion annually across agriculture, refining and logistics. It could give farmers a new market, insulate us from geopolitical fuel shocks and create an Arctic fuel reserve that doesn't cost $10 a litre to deliver. It means rural jobs. It means Indigenous-led infrastructure and northern resupply chains. It means fuel security for defence operations without relying on U.S. or overseas supply. Ottawa wants certainty from China before making concessions on canola tariffs, minister says It also means leverage. SAF opens the door to premium export markets in the EU and U.S., and strengthens interoperability with NATO and NORAD fleets. Done right, this isn't just industrial policy – it's foreign policy. If Canada can't fuel its own jets, we don't control our defence. If we can't deliver fuel to our Arctic bases without draining our supply chain, we don't control our territory. And if we can't build the industrial system we're uniquely positioned to lead, we don't control our future. Ottawa must treat SAF as strategic infrastructure, not just a climate file. That means committing to a federal SAF procurement mandate for defence and Arctic operations, subsidizing Prairie-based SAF refineries and creating a domestic strategic reserve by 2028. It also means integrating SAF into NORAD modernization planning – so the next time we upgrade our northern air bases, we're upgrading their fuel supply, too. Sovereignty isn't a slogan. It's fuel in the tank. It's time to fill it.
Globe and Mail
29 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Ontario Shipyards partners with province and Italy's largest builder to ready bid for navy corvettes
The Ontario government is boosting efforts to turn the province into an unlikely shipbuilding centre in the hope that its underutilized shipyards can land a multibillion-dollar contract for new Canadian navy corvettes. On Monday, Premier Doug Ford and Vic Fedeli, the Minister of Economic Development, met with senior executives of Algoma Steel ASTL-T of Sault Ste. Marie., Ont., Canada's second-biggest steelmaker. 'We let them know that if they try to pivot into supplying the defence industry and other areas, we would be there to help them,' Mr. Fedeli told The Globe and Mail. Algoma, the country's only publicly listed steel producer, could make steel plate for ships and other heavy military equipment if Ontario Shipyards of Hamilton, the largest ship repair and construction company on the Great Lakes, were to win the corvette contract. Algoma is already listed as a potential supplier to Team Vigilance, the Canadian and international consortium assembled two years ago to bid for the next generation of Canadian naval ships, specifically corvettes. It includes Italy's Fincantieri FNCNF, the largest shipbuilder in Europe and the fourth-largest in the world. Opinion: The USMCA agreement may be circling the drain. Time to fill the trade sink elsewhere Ontario pivots to European defence market with car industry under threat Corvettes are relatively small offshore patrol vessels, or OPVs, that would replace the dozen Kingston Class ships that were built for the Royal Canadian Navy in the mid-1990s and are reaching the end of their careers. The navy announced in July that it will begin to pull eight of the ships out of service in the fall. Those ships are 55 metres long, carry a crew of about 50 and are used for coastal and fisheries patrol, training, minesweeping, search and rescue, law enforcement and drug interdiction. The new Vigilance ships, if built, would be somewhat larger, perhaps 100 metres long, to give them more range and capabilities, said Ted Kirkpatrick, Ontario Shipyards' director of business development and government relations. The federal government has yet to issue a tender for the new corvettes – the navy is reportedly still setting the parameters of the project – and neither Mr. Fedeli nor Mr. Kirkpatrick know the timeline or the expected budget, though the contract could be worth several billion dollars. 'We feel hopeful that this project will move forward fairly quickly,' Mr. Kirkpatrick said, noting that Prime Minister Mark Carney has made rearmament an industrial priority to meet Canada's domestic defence needs and NATO commitments. In an effort to kick-start an ambitious shipbuilding program in Ontario, which has not built a warship since the Second World War, the provincial government last month launched a financial program worth $215-million. The amount is designed to support shipbuilding capacity under the National Shipbuilding Strategy program. Mr. Fedeli said the incentives would be composed of loans and grants and tailored to each project. 'We want Ontario to get back into the shipbuilding business,' he said. Several other funds, including the new Ontario Together Trade Fund, could offer incentives to steel companies and other manufacturers to help them serve Canadian customers. Mr. Kirkpatrick said Ontario Shipyards 'hopes and expects to be a large beneficiary of the incentives programs.' Ontario Shipyards (formerly Heddle Shipyards) was founded in 1987 and has three sites – in Hamilton, Port Weller and Thunder Bay. The company has about 250 employees, and its main business today is repairing coast guard vessels, not building new ships. The company joined Team Vigilance to launch an unsolicited proposal to build a new corvette fleet. In addition to Fincantieri, the group includes Vard, which is Fincantieri's design arm; Thales THLEF, the French defence company that specializes in electronics; and SH Defence of Denmark, a maker of modular loading systems. Ontario Shipyards expects competition for the contract from the other industry players in Canada, primarily Irving Shipbuilding of Nova Scotia, which has a contract worth $8-billion to build the first three River-class destroyers for the navy; Davie Shipbuilding of Quebec, which is making icebreakers for the coast guard; and Seaspan Shipyards of British Columbia, which is building large non-combat ships for the navy and the coast guard. Mr. Kirkpatrick said the three rival shipbuilders have ample work at the moment, leaving only Ontario Shipyards with enough spare capacity to take on a big, new naval contract. 'We have the largest amount of underutilized capacity in Canada,' he said. 'If there is anyone who can put a boat in the water and paint it grey, it's us.' He said the presence of Fincantieri and subsidiary Vard are key advantages for Team Vigilance. Vard would design the vessels, and Fincantieri would handle shipyard layout, procurement and project management. Mr. Kirkpatrick said a team from Fincantieri visited Ontario Shipyards last year to assess the company's capabilities and determine what equipment and training it would need to launch a competitive bid for Canadian navy warships. Fincantieri, based in Trieste, in Italy's northeast, is controlled by the Italian government and is listed on the Milan exchange. The company has built some of world's largest ships for Cunard, Carnival, Princess and other cruise companies. It also builds combat ships, including aircraft carriers and submarines, for the Italian, U.S. and other governments. In Wisconsin, it makes the U.S. Navy's Constellation-class frigates, which are based on the Italian Navy's multipurpose frigates, known as FREMM.
CTV News
29 minutes ago
- CTV News
‘It's devastating': Manitoba farmers react to Chinese canola tariffs
Alex Karpa reports on the impact new tariffs launched by China in response to Canada's tariff on electric vehicles could have on farmers and consumers.
