Decrease article font size Increase article font size Domestic travel rose 3.3 per cent in July from the same month a year earlier as cross-border traffic to the US fell, new data from Statistics Canada shows. As cross-border screen passenger traffic decreased by 8.7 percent in July, the agency notes that this figure was “well below the same month in 2024,” which was 12.5 percent. July saw a decline of almost one per cent from the same period last year, with three of the largest airports reporting losses in July 2026: Vancouver International (-4.5 per cent), Montreal/Pierre Elliott Trudeau International (-2.0 per cent) and Calgary International (-0.1 per cent). Get daily national news Get daily Canadian news delivered to your inbox so you never miss the day’s top stories. Additionally, the count of inspected international passengers in July 2024 grew by 6.2 per cent over July 2023, and Statistics Canada considered cross-border passenger traffic to be “fully recovered” at that time as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadians began traveling to the US again after 15 consecutive months of low travel rates due to tensions between neighboring countries, with April being the first month in which travel to the US saw an increase since January 2025. More about Canada More videos Low travel resulted in Canadian travel spending to the US falling by $3.3 billion in 2025 amid the ‘Buy Canada’ movement, with data separated from Statistics Canada indicating that “Canadians shifted leisure travel abroad away from the United States (-21.5 per cent; -3.2 million visits) in favor of overseas options (+12.2 per cent; +1.1 million visits).” In total, travel spending from Canada to the US reached $18.8 billion in 2025, while foreign travel spending reached $81.3 billion. © 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.