Megan McArdle has an interesting post about the precipitous drop in US visits to Canada:
Kevin Drum is puzzled:
Well, here’s today’s [chart]: day trips to Canada are down. Way down. It’s not clear why, either. The accompanying story blames it mostly on new passport rules, along with “other factors, including the recession and the higher Canadian dollar.” But that doesn’t really hold water. The downward spike from May to June might be due to new passport rules, but the chart makes clear that travel has been steadily decreasing ever since it recovered from 9/11 in early 2002. Obviously passport rules have nothing to do with this 7-year trend, and neither does the recession or the strength of the Canadian dollar.
Megan points out that the strengthening Canadian dollar does actually account for much of the change, with the passport requirement only being the final nail in the coffin. Security theatre, as pointed out in the comments, probably accounts for some of the decline as well.
The comment thread is quite interesting, as both facts and “facts” get deployed to support pre-existing positions. Do read through them.
I’m finding this an interesting discussion, as I’m headed the other way tomorrow . . . I’m taking a week-long course near Pittsburgh. I remember the days of the cheap Canadian dollar, when we used to use terms like “Canadian Peso” or “TundraMicroBuck”, and I don’t particularly miss them. I don’t know if I’ll be doing much shopping while I’m in Pennsylvania, but the price differences are much smaller than they were the last time I was in the states.
