New passport rules punch Canadian tourism in the gut

By Jason Buckland, Sympatico / MSN Finance

By the end of the season, people might be wondering what the least successful tourist locales were this summer – Mexico City, Fallujah, or the Rogers Centre once the Jays’ bats inevitably cool off.

Yet the rest of Canada, thanks to some well-intentioned bureaucracy, could soon become a nominee, as well.

Starting June 1, new American passport laws will take effect and make the trip across the Canada-U.S. border a little more dicey.

And, as the Toronto Star reports, that’s going to have a big time impact on the amount of tourism bucks the Canadian economy can count on this year.

When the little-promoted June deadline hits, all Canadians over 19 visiting the U.S. will need a passport or other enhanced pieces of ID or they won’t be allowed to make the trip.

(Examples of an enhanced ID include the new Ontario driver’s license – which costs $115: $40, plus the usual $75 renewal fee – though they don’t look like they’ll be ready by June 1 and cost a bit more than the $87 adult passport fee.)

While this, of course, sends Canadians scrambling to passport offices with last-minute applications, the real issue is that Americans will need a passport, too, when coming into Canada.

Problem is, only about 30% of them even have the document.

So it’s with considerable understanding that Canadian tourism officials are spooked by this trend.

As the Star muses, the timing of the passport deadline relative to the swine flu outbreak also makes matters significantly worse.

With the recession biting families in middle-class America, where else are vacationing Yanks likely to turn aside from Canada when Mexico is out of the picture?

And how many prospective dollars to stimulate our economy are we going to miss out on because of these new sanctions? Probably more than we’d like.

Comments

Why does the Canadian government need to "enforce" Americans to have passports to enter? Simply ask Americans to have say, two pieces of identification with one having a picture, such as a driver's license. Once all provinces and states have the updated licenses, the problem is solved?!

Canada does not require Amerricans to have passports, but Americans need them to get back
into thier own country.

It's only fair that Americans need a passport. Why should we be the only ones penalized and inconvenienced by American paranoia?

This nonsense of passports is nothing but a money grab for the government.

I've been into upper US states and asked the "crossborder shopping" question of people in stores and basically they say the only reason they take trip to Canada is to shop but hteir not going to lay the money out for a passport just to do it. Unlike Canadians , they don't have a fetish for the passport. Let's make it easier for them to cross our border and stimulate our economy.

a shame that canadians are american a__ kissers

America owns canada and all it's lovely little business people,i thought i lived in the country of Canada not the country of North america

Wake up canada there's more customers besides the almighty americans on this planet, including your fellow canadian customers

An EDL is NOT more expensive than a passport, and I hate it when calculate its cost as $40 + $75. Virtually EVERYONE has a driver's license, even those who don't own a car.

The cost is $40, not $115. With that logic the passport option would cost you $162, but no one adds it up that way.

Another great thing with the EDLs is that more people will cross by car and fly out of U.S. airports to their destinations (since passports are still needed to fly out of Canada). This will be a good way of sticking it to the Canadian airports who have been ripping us off with their extra taxes, surcharges and fees of all sorts.