COVID politics and re-opening

July 20, 2021

The boat business has a strong customer base of Americans right from the Atlantic to the Pacific and for the past 16 months, those American boat and property owners have been blocked from accessing their property because of COVID-19. We all understand why, but there has been a lot of anger and frustration around the lack of a clear timeline for reopening Canada’s border to U.S. and overseas travelers from Justin Trudeau’s government.

At this stage, we now expect Canada will open to fully-vaccinated travelers from the U.S. as early as mid-August, and from all other countries by September, if “the current positive path of vaccination rate and public health conditions continue,” the prime minister’s office said in a recent meeting with provincial leaders. (READ MORE)

Calls to open the border have intensified in recent weeks, with business leaders and politicians on both sides of the border pushing for a reopening to vaccinated travelers. As of July 5, people who are vaccinated are exempt from the mandatory 14-day quarantine period, and talks about fully reopening the border are expected to resume July 21, according to the Canadian government’s official website.

However, for the Canadian businesses that have long benefitted from a summer influx of American customers, it’s getting to be too late. We are about to pass the half-way mark in the summer of 2021 and I suspect that many American families will have made other summer plans by this time.

Also, in this edition of Boating Industry Canada News Week Digest, we have a Luxury Tax survey and I feel that it’s critical that the industry responds in big numbers on this.

If you are in boat sales and can participate in this survey, please stop and do it. Click through to see the four questions that we need to answer.

The boat business is about to take a major hit if this Luxury Tax is implemented and we must seize this opportunity to defend our position.

A $250,000 boat is not a “luxury yacht” and for the middle-class Canadian families who were planning that sort of a live-aboard boat purchase because they cannot afford the million-dollar price tag for a summer camp or cottage, political optics are about to do serious long-term damage to our industry.

It seems that although Trudeau has not called an election yet, the spending and campaigning has begun in full force.

Andy Adams – Editor