Originally Posted by
ridefar
It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see the borders closed until roughly then (speaking as a Canadian). Not that I am happy about that. There is, seemingly, zero appetite amongst Canadians for opening the border; the lobbying efforts of the airlines have (surprisingly) had zero impact on government policy, and there has been zero public discussion of mitigating measures (such as deploying screening at airports or other means of testing arrivals that might reduce or eliminate the 14 day quarantine). I would add that, with the exception of very high end properties, this all hasn't been an unmitigated disaster for tourism either. I find this very surprising, but Banff had 85% of the regular visitor traffic this year. So surprising I doubt it, but that was the press release from the townsite. They didn't comment on revenue associated with that traffic, but it is certainly not so disastrous that governments are going to change border access in the need to save hundreds of thousands of jobs (unless other areas of Canada are drastically different). We are not Italy/Greece/Spain in this respect.
Depends where. The entire Churchill bear season is dead as a doornail. There is effectively zero tourism in the territories this year, domestic or otherwise, because of restrictions. Anywhere reliant on cruise traffic is dead. Both Victoria (on Canada Day!) and Quebec City in August were very quiet, and Toronto has certainly not had much domestic tourism. There has been big domestic demand for nature destinations (Muskokas, Gaspe, Banff) but even there you see big hotel discounts that frankly never would happen in summer otherwise.
It drives me crazy that the government isn't just putting into place border tests in lieu on quarantine, as in Germany (among many other places). It's not like Canada is New Zealand - the daily Covid rates here are something like 60% of the US right now, and lower than, e.g., much of the Caribbean. If you passed a test on arrival, you are less likely to have Covid than the average Canadian on the street. I should mention that there is a lot of debate about this at high levels - I am involved in policy discussions basically at the top (though I am external to government) and even I have no idea what the government hold-up is here. There are certainly politics involved, that's for sure.