by Jen Mallia
Last updated: 10:05 AM ET, Fri October 24, 2025
For only the third time since June 2006 (excluding two months during COVID) there were more Americans crossing our border into Canada than there were Canadians coming home from the the U.S.
Statistics Canada published travel data for August, 2025 and the numbers show the continued decline of cross border traffic. While northbound American visitors dipped slightly, Canadian traffic home from the U.S. continued in freefall, most notably for those driving.
In total, US residents took 3.2 million trips to Canada in August (down 1.4% from the same month in 2024) while Canadians returned from 2.9 million trips to the United States — representing a 29.7% decrease.
The U.S. is still the most-visited foreign country for Canadian residents, representing 70.2% of all trips abroad during August, 2025. Americans represented 78.1% of all non-resident trips here.
When compared with August, 2024, there were 21 percent fewer Canadians returning home this year. Canadian-resident return trips from the United States by automobile declined by 32.6% to 2.2 million in August 2025. More than half of these trips, (57.6%) were same-day trips.
Air passenger traffic by returning Canadian residents from the U.S. was also down, decreasing by 17 percent compared with the same month a year earlier.
As in other months since the travel boycott began, the sharp decline in transborder traffic doesn’t mean Canadians are staying home , they just aren't going stateside. Canadian-resident return trips by air from overseas countries increased 9.1% compared with August 2024.
Closing in on a million (886,000) overseas residents visited Canada in August, mainly by air (76.6%)
The top two overseas markets for visitors to Canada are Europe and Asia, which both had an increase in arrivals in August over last year. European visitors (mainly from the U.K., France and Germany) were up 7.9% this year, and Asian visitors up by 8.4%.
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