As if new U.S. border crossing requirements, the soaring Loonie, Olympic aversion, H1N1 and the global economic downturn weren’t enough of a challenge for tourism, the federal government last month imposed new visa requirements on Czech and — more importantly for Whistler — Mexican visitors to Canada.
Mexico, as many a Whistler business and hotel owner knows, is one of the fastest-growing markets for Canadian tourism — or it was until July 14, when Immigration Minister Jason Kenney decreed that all visitors to Canada from Mexico (and the Czech Republic) would require visas. The immediate result was that travellers were sent scrambling, there was a run on the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City, and Canadian tourist businesses that most depend on travel from that country saw their short-term business plummet.
What gives? Does the minister not know how much resorts such as Whistler rely in part on travel from that part of the world? Or does he simply not care?
None of the above. From the moment he imposed the new requirement, Minister Kenney understood the short-term impacts, but insisted that the larger issue surrounding the increasing number of refugee claimants from Mexico made the new requirement a necessary evil.
“We regret the decision ourselves,” he told The Canadian Press at the time. “We’d rather have visa-free travel, and Mexico is an important partner and friend of Canada’s… However, the reality is that even though we’ve had ongoing discussions with the Mexican authorities over this problem, it’s gotten worse, not better.”
“This problem” is, of course, the number of people from Mexico who arrive on our shores purportedly as tourists, seasonal workers or students and claim refugee status. According to Conservative MP John Weston, the number of Mexican refugee claimants increased from 3,400 in 2005 to 9,400 in 2008, and was on track to eclipse that figure in 2009 before the new rules were put in place. In 2008, only 606 of those refugee claimants were admitted to Canada — an 11 per cent acceptance rate.
Many Mexicans and some Canadian tourism industry officials decried the new rules, calling on Minister Kenney to delay the requirement for, perhaps, three months to soften the blow on legitimate travellers and the tourism industry. However, as Weston told The Question in late July, “It could have sparked a run on our border from bogus refugee claimants.”
It could be argued that Canada’s rules regarding refugee claims, and staffing levels at the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), are the real problem here. That may well be the case, but reforming the system would likely take years and in the meantime, the IRB would be bogged down with a backlog comprised mostly of claims that lack sufficient merit. Imposing the visa requirement is a good, short-term fix, as long as steps are taken to expedite the visa-application process for legitimate visitors to Canada.
By all accounts the government has done that. Weston, who was scheduled to address Whistler council on the issue on Tuesday (Aug. 18) but had to cancel that meeting for unexplained reasons, wrote in a letter dated Aug. 14, “As of today I have been advised that the new requirement is working.” Fifty-five extra case officers have been hired to process visa applications at the embassy in Mexico City, and most are being processed in short order: Walk-in applicants within 24 hours, mail-in applicants within a week.
Mexico was the sixth-largest source of tourists to Canada in 2008, with 266,000 visitors, and that number has been steadily rising. We have little doubt that, despite the short-term impacts of the new rules, those numbers will continue to increase, and the Canadian tourism industry will weather yet another storm.
