CORY'S RANT： Canada is killing its tourism sector.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
201.2367
Summary
Canadians are dying from a lack of access to the country's most important source of economic stimulus, tourism. In this episode, I explain why this is happening, and why we need to do something about it.
Transcript
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so i went down to sandpoint idaho and i tell you the idaho panhandle is a beautiful and underrated
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region to visit by the way the lakes rival anything the okanagan has to offer and it's
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only a short drive from alberta so there's my plug for sandpoint idaho but i really mean it
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it's great down there now in heading south i was at the american border crossing for a little more
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than a few minutes the cars ahead of me flowed through the border quickly and i wasn't asked
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much more than the standard questions you know such as how long i'd be staying and the purpose
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of my visit and then i was waved through nothing else nothing more returning to canada though was
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a different story the lineup of cars stretched for kilometers up the highway we languished in our car
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for well over an hour as the line inched agonizingly slowly towards the border there were four stations
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open at the border crossing and usually that's more than enough to handle the traffic even on weekends
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so why was it going so slowly it's because they were messing around verifying everybody's vaccine
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status now there's the an arrive can app and it works well for those who are vaccinated and have
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set it up when we finally actually got to the border crossing our vaccine status was established
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quickly and we were through within a couple of minutes clearly though many haven't set up the
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app and a number a number of people of course aren't aren't going to get vaccinated and the
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verification has to remind rely on paper and as another means of proof or the person is pulled
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aside and slapped with a pile of quarantine and testing requirements and canadian airports of course
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are even worse right now it's it's a ridiculous song and dance at the border and it isn't making
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anybody any safer it's just another facet of the government's obsession we're trying to harass
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people into getting vaccinated a vaccination doesn't do anything to stop the spread of kova 19
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that's no longer conjecture it's well-established medical fact blocking the unvaccinated or forcing
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them to endure rounds of testing and quarantining is not slowing or stopping any viral spread
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and it's coming with a heavy cost for canadians in the hospitality and tourism sector now while i
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was down in idaho we attended a large uh annual antique car show it's a great thing it was a great
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time we saw some fantastic automobiles uh throughout the streets they did the whole downtown up not a
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single electric car was to be found of course i don't think our grandchildren are going to be
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attending shows to admire classic chevy volts but i digress the other noteworthy site was the number
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of canadian license plates on cars in the area bc and alberta plates made up probably about a quarter
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of the plates around town thousands of canadians had come down for the weekend and it was serving
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the town well restaurants and pubs were bustling hotels were full and stores did great trade it was
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nice seeing so many people out and about enjoying themselves and spending some money also in my
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anecdotal license plate studies i noted that pretty much every vehicle languishing with me in the border
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line up to return to canada was canadian there's hardly an american plate to be seen due to having
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uh family down there i've made this trip dozens of times over the years and i've never seen such a dearth
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of american plates heading up to visit canada the bottom line is we're too expensive and we're too much
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of a pain in the ass to visit our vaccination requirements eliminate a number of potential
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visitors while the testing and other requirements discourage others from bothering while some might
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dismiss these things as trivial inconveniences those inconveniences are keeping untold numbers of
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american visitors from coming to canada and it's costing us a fortune you can't beat tourist dollars
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for economic stimulus foreigners are literally bringing money from elsewhere here and spreading
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it around our businesses tourism directly employed nearly a million canadians indirectly almost 2 million
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canadians when that's brought into account back in 2019 the economic benefit was about 20 billion
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it's big business and we're cutting deeply into it for no discernible benefit
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the weather's warming and there's millions of tourists not just the united states around the
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world and they're eager to visit canada and spend money here our economy has taken a beating
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this last few years and it's ridiculous that we're hindering our recovery recovery by stubbornly
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clinging to these vaccine mandates this is going to be the third summer since covet 19 appeared in
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the world we've already decimated our tourism sector with lockdowns over the last two summers
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let's open the doors and let the tourism sector recover we've got businesses continuing to close
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permanently while foreign tourists are finding new world destinations to visit they might not come