On A Weekend When Border Crossings Would Normally Be Jammed With Cars, Significant Numbers of Canadians Were Already Saying NO to Travelling to Trumpland
A News Release from Data Shows, a professional, non-partisan data gathering venue based in Ontario, Canada
Posted March 11th, 2025 on Niagara At Large
Two weekends before Trump became president, Canadians’ car trips to the United States were up 31 per cent from the year before. After a month of insults, attacks and threats, on Family Day weekend, trips were down 35 per cent, according to Statistics Canada data.
The number of Canadian-plated vehicles returning from the United States has been down every weekend since Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
Tough luck. Go complain to Trump
Canadians’ trips to the United States were up by 10, 20 or almost 30 per cent on many days in the two weeks before Monday January 20, 2025. Only on one day were Canadians’ return trips down from 2024, but only by a negligible one per cent.
February 28 is the last day in 2025 for which Statistics Canada has published data, and it shows for the previous straight 29 days Canadians’ trips were lower this year than last. And not just a bit.
On the Sunday of Family Day weekend, returns were down 44 per cent. Many days have seen declines of 20 and 30 per cent.
Two weeks before Trump, visits were up 32%. By Family Day, they’d fallen 35%.
Land border traffic has a strong weekly cycle, with higher weekend traffic. Two weekends before Trump became president, Canadians’ car travel from the U.S. was up 31 per cent. Even the weekend before his Monday inauguration it was up five per cent from the same weekend of the year before.
Once upon a time and not so many Saturday mornings ago, you would usually see vehicles in six or more lines, backed up near or even past the bottom of this screen, all waiting on the Peace Bridge between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, N.Y. to cross into the United States. But as this image from a bridge camera and downloaded by Niagara At Large this past February shows, those days are gone. What a difference a Trump threatening the economy and sovereignty of Canada can make.
But on every weekend since, Canadian visits have been down, including the 35 per cent tumble on the mid-February Family Day weekend.
There were 76,907 Canadian-plated vehicles returning to Canada on Family Day 2025, over 41,000 fewer than the 118,106 vehicles that returned from the U.S. on the 2024 Family Day weekend.
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Tom Parkin of Data Shows
Data Shows’ editor is Tom Parkin. Contact me with interesting data, data chart or a guest piece you’d like to submit to Data Shows: tparkin@impact-strategies.ca .
Tom Parkin@tparkin Canadian columnist and commentator with a bluntly social democratic perspective. I write a lot about data that matters to our everyday lives. But sometimes it’s just plain opinion.
To watch a report aired on CBC’s The National this March 10th on the drop in border crossings, click on the screen immediately below –
A Few Words from Doug Draper At Niagara At Large – The only way a bully like Trump is going to stop threatening us is if enough people in his own country starting complaining to him and his MAGA army about what those threats are costing them.
So let’s continue to stand up for our Canada by purchasing as many Made in Canada products as we can and by boycotting travel to the U.S.A. and all products Made in the U.S.A.
NIAGARA AT LARGE Encourages You To Join The Conversation By Sharing Your Views On This Post In The Space Following The Bernie Sanders Quote Below.
“A Politician Thinks Of The Next Election. A Leader Thinks Of The Next Generation.” – Bernie Sanders
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