Western Standard - CORY'S RANT： Canada is killing its tourism sector.

00:00:00.000 so i went down to sandpoint idaho and i tell you the idaho panhandle is a beautiful and underrated

00:00:05.200 region to visit by the way the lakes rival anything the okanagan has to offer and it's

00:00:09.520 only a short drive from alberta so there's my plug for sandpoint idaho but i really mean it

00:00:13.520 it's great down there now in heading south i was at the american border crossing for a little more

00:00:19.040 than a few minutes the cars ahead of me flowed through the border quickly and i wasn't asked

00:00:22.640 much more than the standard questions you know such as how long i'd be staying and the purpose

00:00:26.560 of my visit and then i was waved through nothing else nothing more returning to canada though was

00:00:31.680 a different story the lineup of cars stretched for kilometers up the highway we languished in our car

00:00:36.800 for well over an hour as the line inched agonizingly slowly towards the border there were four stations

00:00:43.440 open at the border crossing and usually that's more than enough to handle the traffic even on weekends

00:00:47.760 so why was it going so slowly it's because they were messing around verifying everybody's vaccine

00:00:53.520 status now there's the an arrive can app and it works well for those who are vaccinated and have

00:00:58.320 set it up when we finally actually got to the border crossing our vaccine status was established

00:01:04.000 quickly and we were through within a couple of minutes clearly though many haven't set up the

00:01:07.680 app and a number a number of people of course aren't aren't going to get vaccinated and the

00:01:12.320 verification has to remind rely on paper and as another means of proof or the person is pulled

00:01:17.760 aside and slapped with a pile of quarantine and testing requirements and canadian airports of course

00:01:22.000 are even worse right now it's it's a ridiculous song and dance at the border and it isn't making

00:01:27.040 anybody any safer it's just another facet of the government's obsession we're trying to harass

00:01:31.920 people into getting vaccinated a vaccination doesn't do anything to stop the spread of kova 19

00:01:37.760 that's no longer conjecture it's well-established medical fact blocking the unvaccinated or forcing

00:01:44.000 them to endure rounds of testing and quarantining is not slowing or stopping any viral spread

00:01:49.280 and it's coming with a heavy cost for canadians in the hospitality and tourism sector now while i

00:01:54.560 was down in idaho we attended a large uh annual antique car show it's a great thing it was a great

00:01:59.760 time we saw some fantastic automobiles uh throughout the streets they did the whole downtown up not a

00:02:05.200 single electric car was to be found of course i don't think our grandchildren are going to be

00:02:08.880 attending shows to admire classic chevy volts but i digress the other noteworthy site was the number

00:02:14.400 of canadian license plates on cars in the area bc and alberta plates made up probably about a quarter

00:02:20.000 of the plates around town thousands of canadians had come down for the weekend and it was serving

00:02:24.960 the town well restaurants and pubs were bustling hotels were full and stores did great trade it was

00:02:30.560 nice seeing so many people out and about enjoying themselves and spending some money also in my

00:02:36.080 anecdotal license plate studies i noted that pretty much every vehicle languishing with me in the border

00:02:41.280 line up to return to canada was canadian there's hardly an american plate to be seen due to having

00:02:46.800 uh family down there i've made this trip dozens of times over the years and i've never seen such a dearth

00:02:51.440 of american plates heading up to visit canada the bottom line is we're too expensive and we're too much 0.92

00:02:56.240 of a pain in the ass to visit our vaccination requirements eliminate a number of potential 0.94

00:03:00.640 visitors while the testing and other requirements discourage others from bothering while some might 0.95

00:03:05.200 dismiss these things as trivial inconveniences those inconveniences are keeping untold numbers of

00:03:09.920 american visitors from coming to canada and it's costing us a fortune you can't beat tourist dollars 0.57

00:03:15.040 for economic stimulus foreigners are literally bringing money from elsewhere here and spreading

00:03:20.880 it around our businesses tourism directly employed nearly a million canadians indirectly almost 2 million

00:03:26.880 canadians when that's brought into account back in 2019 the economic benefit was about 20 billion

00:03:33.280 it's big business and we're cutting deeply into it for no discernible benefit

00:03:36.720 the weather's warming and there's millions of tourists not just the united states around the

00:03:42.160 world and they're eager to visit canada and spend money here our economy has taken a beating

00:03:46.080 this last few years and it's ridiculous that we're hindering our recovery recovery by stubbornly

00:03:50.320 clinging to these vaccine mandates this is going to be the third summer since covet 19 appeared in

00:03:55.120 the world we've already decimated our tourism sector with lockdowns over the last two summers

00:04:00.000 let's open the doors and let the tourism sector recover we've got businesses continuing to close

00:04:04.800 permanently while foreign tourists are finding new world destinations to visit they might not come

00:04:10.080 back let's end the pointless mandates now 0.99

Western Standard - May 24, 2022

CORY'S RANT： Canada is killing its tourism sector.

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