🇨🇦 Canadian Duty-Free Shops Are Dying While Ottawa Lectures About Buy-Canadian Patriotism

In 2025, Canadians made 22.9 million trips to the United States — down 28 percent from 31.9 million the year prior. The political class cheered this as national solidarity. The owners of Canada's 31 remaining land-border duty-free shops are experiencing it as a slow-motion bankruptcy. Simon Resch of Emerson Duty Free in Manitoba has watched monthly revenues drop between 30 and 50 percent since 2024 — and a catastrophic 75 percent since 2019. He employed 35 people in 2019. He now employs four, including himself. One shop, Woodstock Duty Free, already closed after 30 years. As detailed, unlike during COVID — when federal wage subsidies and rent relief were available — zero government support has materialised for these businesses. The federal government imposed an excise tax on duty-free cigarettes that has risen 380 percent since the early 2000s and refuses to modernise a 40-year-old regulatory framework. Politicians told Canadians not to travel south. Small business owners on the border absorbed the cost. The government absorbed none of it. Populism is very popular until someone has to pay the bill.

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