Why our neighbors aren’t visiting.

Canada

Ezra LevantThe Calgary Sun

Americans are staying away from Canada, said Ezra Levant in The Calgary Sun. We can’t blame the price of gas. Tourism from the U.S. had already dropped to a 25-year low this summer, even before Hurricane Katrina hit the oil industry so hard. The reason can only be that Prime Minister Paul Martin’s “policy of unrestrained anti-Americanism” has had an effect. Americans are making a political statement against Canada by vacationing at home, just as they did against France when they stopped drinking French wine to protest France’s opposition to the war in Iraq. Martin’s predecessor, Jean Chrétien, was also anti-American, but he was merely “sullen.” Martin, by contrast, is aggressive, threatening to “divert oil exports from the U.S. to its hostile rival, China,” and forbidding the U.S. from putting any missile defense sites on its soil. So far, we’re getting off easy. “As retaliations go, a drop in tourism is about as gentle as it gets.” If the Americans really get annoyed, though, they could cripple our economy by causing huge delays at border crossings. Canadians may think the slurs are just political rhetoric. But “Americans notice.”