As happens5:26The owner of the tax free store says that the business is suffering, since Canadians avoid the United States
If businesses do not recover soon in your tax store, MYRic Lapointe says he will have to fire people.
“I’ve had three clients so far,” said the owner of the store A As happens Host Kӧksal on Friday afternoon. “It is a fraction of what we normally have at this time of the year.”
Lapointe says that the business has dropped 60 percent during the same period last year at the Borts Hors Imprayes of the Beauce, near the border of Quebec with Maine.
He is not alone. Tax -free stores throughout the country, which still recover from pandemic travel restrictions, inform massive falls in business in recent months, since Canadians avoid traveling more and more to the United States.
Graduated by the Canada Border Services Agency at 52 Land Border and International Airports in Canada, tax -free stores sell products, which include tax -free alcohol, cross -border travelers, and are legally unable to pivot in deliveries or online sales.
“If we don’t have anyone who travels in the United States, we don’t have customers,” Lapointe said.
Less trips to the south
Sales in tax free stores have fallen between 40 and 50 percent throughout the country since the end of January, with some remote crosses that report decreases of up to 80 percent, according to the Frontier Duty Free association, which represents 32 of these stores.
“He simply left the cliff,” said Barbara Barrett, executive director of the association. “It’s very gloomy.”
The number of return trips among Canadians traveling to the United States in March Plummeted compared to the previous yearAccording to Statistics Canada. Air trips fell into 13.5 percent, while land trips fell 32 percent.
The fall coincides with a pivot of national tourism when the president of the United States, Donald Trump, launches a commercial war with Canada and other countries, and makes repeated threats to Canada’s sovereignty.
Several Canadians also told CBC that they canceled the trips because They fear high scrutiny by border guardssomething The Canadian government has warned travelers about.
Canadian Jasmine Mooney was recently locked in a United States detention center for 11 days on the difficulties with your US visa renewal application, and since then it has been described in heartbreaking conditions. Two German tourists and A Backpack of Wales They have also been arrested in recent months.
In addition, the fall in cross -border trips of the earth is in both directions. Automobile visits to US residents fell 11 percent last month compared to the previous year, the second consecutive month of decreases year after year.
“It is as if the Americans were shy to come to Canada,” said Philippe Bachand, who runs a tax free store to the south of Montreal, pointing to the boos that US sports teams have received in Canada. “It is not cozy.”
Call aid
As tax -free stores are trapped in the sights of a commercial war and geopolitical tensions beyond its control, the Association of Border Rights free is asking the Federal Government to offer support in the form of subsidies or loans to extend the interruption.
Many of these stores, says the association, are still recovering from pandemics losses.
“I just woke up from my covid hangover, and I am having a tariff nightmare,” said John Slipp while driving at tax free in Woodstock, NB, which his father founded in 1985.
A second generation Osoyoos owner, BC, free of the store, said he is struggling to keep his business afloat in Trump’s commercial war with Canada. With cross -border traffic, Cameron BriSsonnette said he doesn’t know how much more time he can pay his staff.
Cameron Minsonnette fears that he is forced to close his tax free store in Osoyoos, BC, who has been in his family since the 80s, and that he intended to move on to his children.
During a recent interview with CBC News, He broke crying while arguing the future of his family business, which he has already fallen from 15 employees to only three.
“It is reaching a point where you have to have a real moment of calculation,” he said.
The mayor of Osoyoos, Sue McKortoff, told CBC that if the store closes, it will also affect the community.
“Tax free is one of the best businesses in the city,” he said. “They have supported the city a lot. They have hired people in the city.”
Meanwhile, Lapointe says that if sales do not recover during the bustling weekend of Easter, he will have no choice but to let the workers go.
He says he doesn’t want to lose his business, which is loved for his heart.
“I started working here in 1990 as a student, then I became the assistant manager, then the manager for 20 years and bought the store three years ago,” he said.
“Then, for me, that store is my home.”
With files from Canadian Press and CBC BC interview with Eric Lapointe produced by Leïla Delo.
