Canadian Skiers Shun USA
22nd January 2026 | James Cove, Canada.
PlanetSKI is on a 2-month stay in Canada and we have observed that Canadians are shunning the USA this winter. Trump is to blame + bad exchange rate & poor snow in USA. UPDATED
Across the country Canadians are choosing to buy local products in the face of US tariffs and President Trump’s comments and attitude.
It has been well documented.
They have also pretty much boycotted skiing in the USA with numbers significantly down.
Visiting the USA is seen as unpatriotic and therefore un-Canadian.
On a more practical level the snow in the USA has generally been poor this winter, while the snow in Canada has generally been in plentiful supply.
On another practical level the USA is expensive due to a weak Canadian dollar.
The US has long been the number one travel destination for Canadians — not a surprise given the proximity of two countries.
While it remains a top destination, overall the number of Canadians making trips south has dropped by more than 25%.
That decline has been noticed by the American tourism industry, which forecast a loss of $5.7bn (£4.3bn) in tourism spending.
For years Canadians have been the biggest source of international visitors to the US, making up 28% of all foreign tourists in 2024.
Roughly four million fewer Canadians have visited the US in the past 12 months and skier visitors have plummeted too.
Trump has imposed tariffs on several key Canadian sectors and has warned of more to come.
He has also referred to Canada as ‘the 51st state’ — a comment that has been met with a mix of anxiety and a strong display of patriotism.
The Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has made what is being judged a landmark and historical speech in Davos, Switzerland, this week at the World Economic Forum.
Mark Carney’s words in Switzerland have gone down well with Canadians.
Every one I have spoken to in ski resorts have supported Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England.
Internationally his words seem to have galvanised opposition to Trump and given a strategy for the so-called ‘medium powers’ to rally and unify around.
Trump’s limited grasp of facts was seemingly exemplified when he said to the World Economic Forum, “Without us, right now you’d all be speaking German.”
German is the most widely spoken of the four official languages in Switzerland.
It was a one hour and 12 minute meandering address from Trump.
While the relationship between the two countries has had its ups and downs, many Canadians shop, travel and work in the USA, plus have family ties to the country.
But the past 12 months has seen a change in Canadians’ overall attitudes towards the US, if not towards Americans themselves.
The BBC has reported that Polling conducted by the Pew Research Center last spring indicated that 64% of Canadians held a negative view of the US in 2025 — the highest ever recorded in more than two decades of polling by Pew.
The survey suggested an even larger percentage of Canadians, around 77%, lack confidence in Trump as a president.
Nine-in-10 respondents described him as ‘arrogant’, and three-quarters said they believe he is ‘dangerous’.
A separate Angus Reid poll from October suggests that nearly half of Canadians (46%) want their government to approach the US as an “enemy or potential threat”.
This is higher than for India (24%) or China (34%).
Mark Carney has sought to improve the relationship with both of those countries after years of tensions related, among other issues, to allegations of foreign interference.
A more recent Leger poll conducted earlier this month indicates that one in three Canadians believe the US could take ‘direct action’ to control Canada in the future.
The poll was in response to the US seizure this month of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and Trump’s renewed comments on taking control of Greenland.
Whatever happens one thing is certain – Canadians have changed their views of the USA under Trump and this season very few are going skiing south of the border.
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Sunshine Village, Banff, Canada. Image c/o Ross Young.
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