Ezra Levant Watch X

I read Ezra like I can't help but look at a car wreck.

After a few months of shirking my duty, it's time to stare once more unflinching into the abyss that is Ezra Levant's column.

It's sort of refreshing to see that things haven't changed much over the past months. Previously, Ezra had demonstrated his power of mindreading by reading the minds of all Quebecois in determining how they want Ontario to vote in the next Federal election. In this week's column, he reads the minds of all potential American Tourists. In an amazing twist of events, when he considers the motives of other groups, it turns out they all have opinions which support his point of view.

You probably didn't hear about this at all, but StatsCan reported that American tourism to Canada in August was down 5.6% from July, and was the lowest monthly level for quite some time; overnight trips were down to levels not seen since the days of SARS.

Tourism experts across Canada (and even in the West) attribute this drop primarily to high gasoline prices and the rise of the Canadian dollar. Others even suggest it might be due to some Americans heeding President Bush's urging to `avoid nonessential driving'. But Ezra knows better. His uncanny mental abilities allow him to probe the minds of these people and directly see causes, without the tedious necessity of looking at data or, you know, asking them. He knows that the reason is Canadians savage, vicious outbursts of Anti-Americanism:

The obvious answer is that American tourism wasn't hurt by gas prices or currency fluctuations. It was killed by something else that Americans are thinking about when it comes to Canada in the past year.
Gee -- what could that be?
Could it be that Paul Martin's policy of unrestrained anti-Americanism has had an effect? Could it be some Americans -- not all, but certainly enough to cause August's 5.9% drop -- have made a political statement with their vacation plans, just like they have stopped drinking French wine?

(One might reasonably ask why the tourism spending of the ~49% of Americans who voted for Kerry and who are therefore probably fairly sympathetic to an anti-Bush sentiment wouldn't all but make up for the of the ~51% who voted for Bush; but Ezra's mind reading abilities are unlikely to be able to help us understand the motivations of liberals).

Sadly, I'm not blessed with Ezra's unique gifts, so I actually have to trudge through and read stuff to understand some of these things that Ezra can just See with his Sight. For instance, it wasn't at all obvious to me that, as Ezra said:

Some have blamed the rise in gasoline prices. But that doesn't make sense. Travelling from city to city within the U.S. is often a longer drive than heading up to Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, all close to the border. More to the point, the sharp drop in tourism was measured in August -- before hurricane Katrina spiked gas prices.

One of the reasons it wasn't obvious to me is that oil prices have been high all summer (although it's true Katrina spiked them even further), and those resulting high gasoline prices are effecting American tourists even in the U.S.:

Foliage tours are a major revenue source for tour companies in the Northeast. So President Bush’s request that Americans cut back on driving after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced refinery and oil rig shutdowns in the Gulf region has many foliage operators worried that business will suffer.

...A survey in mid-September by AARP found that 47% of those over 50 intended to limit travel and vacations as a result of high gas prices.

Indeed, the article points out that fuel prices have been higher all summer, and that airlines and parts of the tourism industry that rely on driving are `losing a bit of sleep at night'.

Further, the surveys referred to above are slightly older; a very recent survey says that 56% of Americans will travel less this holiday season. Indeed, an earlier survey by the same group said that 43% would travel less this just-past summer. Obviously, no survey can be as precise as Ezra's mind-reading powers -- Ezra can tell what you're really thinking, not just what you are willing to say aloud to those polling for surveys -- but it's worth considering; if that 43% of Americans who said they would travel less on average reduced their travel by, say, a very modest 13%, that would mean a total of 5.6% less travel...

The modest, but real, influence that gasoline prices are having on American tourists might well be why Buffalo is offering Canadians $50 in shopping if they stay in a Buffalo hotel (Shopping is Hopping in Buffalo!)

Might Canadian and US drivers have different responses to fuel prices? Is there a reason why American drivers might be even more prone to change behaviours? Why, yes. Canadians and US drivers have different senses of what is a `fair price' for a gallon of gasoline, and over the past weeks and months, US prices have been further above that price than Canadian prices, and it's perception of price increases, rather than the absolute value of those increases themselves, which drives consumer choices. And indeed, US drivers have been making some changes in their driving behaviour, even if only temporarily, and in ways varying from tourism to community college class schedules.

Similarly, a mundane like me can't immediately grasp Ezra's magical insight here:

Some have blamed the strengthening Canadian dollar, saying it has eroded Canada's economic attraction to Americans. But that doesn't make sense, either. The Canadian dollar is worth roughly 85 U.S. cents today. Last October, it was 81 U.S. cents (and it was 84 U.S. cents last November). Is an extra cent or two really the reason we have the lowest tourism from the U.S. in a generation? If the dollar is the reason, then one would have expected to see this tourism drop last year -- because between October 2003 and October 2004, the Canadian dollar rose from 76 cents to 81 cents -- a bigger jump than in the past year. And in the year before that, the Canadian dollar positively leapt from 63 cents to 76 cents, or 13 cents in just one year. How can a three- or four-cent rise in the Canadian dollar over the past year be to blame for falling U.S. tourism, if an 18-cent rise in the previous two years didn't flatten tourism?

You see, I'm confused because StatsCan has some basic tourism numbers from the very years he mentions:

US Residents Entering Canada, 2000-2004, in Thousands

Year	Visitors ('000)
2000	43,993.8
2001	42,871.3
2002	40,878.2
2003	35,509.5
2004	34,626.1

(It's worth pointing out that Paul Martin became Prime Minister at the end of 2003. Ezra doesn't suggest a reason for the fall in tourism before the nefarious anti-American Martin came to power, nor why the fall slowed as Martin came to power.)

So let's see -- huge jump in Canadian dollar between 2002 and 2003, check; smaller but still significant jumps in the currencies between 2003 and 2004, and 2004 and now, check...

And what happened before the years listed in the table? Well, 1999 and 2000 were Canadian Tourism boom years, as the US economy flourished under President Clinton. So perhaps as the economy slows down from that boom, and exchange rates re-balance, tourism is slowly falling back to previous levels.

But other questions are raised by the same StatsCan Press Release. Travel from, for instance Hong Kong was also down, by 15.7%, and from China by 8.7%. I wonder if Ezra believes that they were driven away by rampant anti-Hong-Kong-ism in Canada? Or how about why Canadian trips to the US are going up -- which makes perfect sense if the exchange rate is the main driver -- despite anti-canadianism in the United States. Perhaps it's just that Canadians are a hardier lot, a little less likely to have their feelings hurt? Only a psychic could know for sure.

Update: You, too, can contribute to the Ezra Levant Watch effort! Currently, the Ezra Levant Watch Archives are, sadly, only 5th on a Google Search for Ezra Levant. With a little effort, maybe we can bump this up to third -- above the location of his own column! If you enjoy the Ezra Levant Watch, please link to the archives on your blog with a text of `Ezra Levant' or `Ezra Levant Watch' and see if we can push it up the rankings!