THE CLOSED BORDER BLUES
Washington state hurting from loss of B.C. visitors
For Canadians looking for a convenient U.S. postal box, they can't beat Mailboxes Plus in Blaine, Wash. “I'm a half-minute from the border,” said owner Christina Hannon. “My customers are 90 per cent Canadian.”
Hanson is a small parcel pickup, but she's busy. Or was, PRECOVID-19.
“Eleven-and-a-half months, I'm just so, so, not doing well,” she said.
Canadians not in a hurry for their mail-ordered stuff have delayed pickup, and “there's no space here, I can't walk anymore. Packages are holding. One lady, she has 200 boxes. I'm like a warehouse,” Hannon said.
Hannon is among several businesses and Washingtonians who are feeling a big hole where Canadians used to travel through. An estimated 7.3 million Canadians crossed the border going south in 2019, and they outnumber U.S. crossers three to one, according to a fall 2020 report by Western Washington University (WWU).
“We miss you so badly,” said Sandy Ward, CEO of Bellingham Whatcom County Tourism. “Please, please, please, come back.”
She said: “We've been devastated by the closure of the border. And it's not just Canadians who are no longer coming to the Northwest corner of the U.S., it's Californians, Oregonians and Washingtonians, all of whom used to travel through the area to take a ferry to Victoria or drive through the land border crossings on their way to Vancouver, Whistler or Alaska.”
Without Canadians, Bellingham International Airport is virtually shut down, the golf courses and casinos have lost a lot of their clientele and Mount Baker's ski resort has been hit, as well as the malls, shops, hotels, time-shares and B&BS, she said.
The WWU report on the impact of the shut border, which closed March 21, 2020, and remains closed until at least March 21, 2021, likely longer, reported these “key take-aways”: Whatcom County's hospitality sector, the Bellingham airport, second-home ownership and “all cross-border leisure travel” has been hit hard.
The report, published in the fall, estimated the county lost 506,000 tourists up to the end of September. It said Bellingham airport passenger numbers were down 70 per cent.
It estimated seven per cent of the county's homeowners are Canadians or dual citizens and the border shutdown and 14-day quarantine requirements for returning Canadian travellers “limit access to Canadian-owned vacation homes or second homes.”
The report found in 2019 that visitors spent $555 million in the area and that tourism supports five per cent of the county's jobs. But the study couldn't say how much of that economic activity came from Canadians. But it noted that they cross to shop, buy cheap gas, pick up mail and to travel for leisure, in Bellingham, Birch Baly, Blaine, Lynden and Mount Baker.
Washington Congresswoman Suzan Delbene, on behalf of other state lawmakers, sent a letter this week to U.S. President Joe Biden, urging him to “safely” reopen the Canada-u. S. border.
“As we approach one year of restricted travel, individuals, families, businesses and communities on both sides of the border have been significantly impacted by these restrictions,” according to the letter, which estimated that Canadians used to spend about US$138 million annually.