Good morning. Flight delays, labour disputes and a Trump slump have made the travel season a game of chance – more on that below, along with Newfoundland’s dangerously dry summer and the chances for a Bank of Canada rate cut. But first:

• Nearly 150 Canadians held in ICE custody this year, including two toddlers, data show
• In war-weary Kyiv, Ukrainians view the Trump-Putin summit with skepticism
• Thousands in St. John’s are under an evacuation alert as wildfires threaten urban centres
• Non-profits accuse Israel of ‘weaponizing’ aid as its forces step up their Gaza City bombardment

Late-summer air travel might feel a little dicey right now. On Tuesday, a system outage at WestJet temporarily grounded every one of its departures. And today, Air Canada begins cancelling trips in anticipation of a flight attendant strike. If the airline and the union can’t reach an agreement over wages and unpaid labour – and if the federal government doesn’t intervene – more than 10,000 flight attendants will walk off the job on Saturday. Air Canada says roughly 130,000 passengers would be affected by the strike each day.

Some of those passengers could find themselves rebooked on another carrier, although Air Canada isn’t particularly optimistic – space will be extremely limited, it said, since “we are in peak travel season.” And if you’ve attempted to book a domestic flight, rental car, RV, cottage, hotel room or short-term rental anytime in the past few months, you know: Canadian travel looks different this year. A surge in patriotic vacations has driven occupancy rates (and prices) up as high as our elbows. The Conference Board of Canada expects that the turn away from U.S. trips could net our tourism sector an additional $8.8-billion in 2025.

It’s a sharp contrast from last year, when Canadians shelled out $14.2-billion more for cross-border travel services than Americans did – an actual trade deficit, if not the one that U.S. President Donald Trump prefers to talk about. U.S. economists are starting to worry about the financial hit brought on by our travel boycott. “I don’t know if Trump doesn’t understand services or doesn’t care,” Dean Baker, senior economist at the D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, told The Globe. “​But it is a very big part of our trade, and it’s likely to go into reverse.” In fact, for the first time since at least 1990, American visitors to Canada now outnumber those of us heading to the States.

The Trump slump

According to new Statistics Canada data, car trips to the States fell 37 per cent in July, compared with the same time last year, and round-trip flights to the U.S. dropped by 26 per cent. By contrast, only 7 per cent fewer U.S. residents came up by car last month, while northbound air travel by Americans stayed pretty much unchanged.

Canadians are skipping Las Vegas: WestJet and Air Canada flew just two-thirds of the passengers down in June as they did that same month in 2024. We’re passing on Cape Cod, where summer bookings from Canadian campers have plunged as much as 77 per cent. We’re ditching New York, helping fuel a projected US$4-billion loss in spending in the city this year – because even though Canadians represent the largest share of tourists to America, we aren’t the only ones making our absence felt.

The U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office just reported that eight of its top 10 overseas markets saw year-over-year declines in July, with the sharpest dips coming from China and Germany. The reasons people changed their vacation plans sound awfully familiar (absent the whole annexation business): They’re angry about Trump’s punishing tariffs and scared of being detained at the border. Now they’re looking to go pretty much anywhere else. The World Travel and Tourism Council said the U.S. is the only country among the 184 they analyzed where international visitor spending is set to drop this year – at a cost of US$12.5-billion.

Good luck, babe!

That’s a pretty staggering loss of business, so little wonder the U.S. is trying to woo visitors back. Brand USA, a travel marketing organization partly funded by the federal government, launched a global tourism campaign this summer called “America the Beautiful,” promoting national parks, family theme parks and scenic road trips. Other states have opted for a more direct appeal to their main source of tourism. In California, Palm Springs installed banners professing the city’s love for Canada. In upstate New York, one restaurant manager printed up a “Bienvenue canadiens!” sign. Northeastern Maine leaned in even further: “Bienvenue à nos amis canadiens!” placard; fluttering Maple Leaf flags.

Unfortunately for America, one of its best tourism ambassadors seems to be playing for our team. For reasons known only to pop singer Chappell Roan, the Midwest princess name-checks Saskatchewan on her latest single, The Subway, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. Now a whole bunch of Roan fans are suddenly Prairies-curious: Total interactions with Tourism Saskatchewan’s social media accounts went up a whopping 1,800 per cent, hitting nearly a million impressions worldwide.

And the province was ready for them, rolling out an entire package of Roan-themed activities high on its tourism website, from star-gazing at the Cypress Hills Dark Sky Preserve (for Red Wine Supernova singalongs) to a stop at Saskatoon’s Remai Modern museum (for Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl enthusiasts). These are stellar excursions that should draw in visitors from across the country, as well. But maybe don’t book the trip on Air Canada just yet.

Newfoundland and Labrador has seen twice as many wildfires as a typical year already and just half the rainfall that usually arrives. Read more here about how the summer’s hot, dry conditions turned the province into a tinderbox.