Statistics Canada says both Canadian residents’ visits to the U.S. and U.S. residents’ trips to Canada increased year over year last month.
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Statistics Canada says cross-border travel between Canada and the United States rose over the past six months compared with the same period last year.
In September 2026, Canadian residents made 1.9 million return trips to the United States by automobile and by air, up 6.8 per cent compared with September 2025. StatCan said the increase marked the sixth consecutive month of year-over-year growth for visits to the U.S. by Canadian residents, even though trips last month remained 31.1 per cent lower than in September 2024.
StatCan also reported growth in the other direction, with U.S. residents’ visits to Canada increasing 17.2 per cent in September 2026 compared with the same month a year earlier, for a total of 1.8 million trips. The agency said the rise continued an eight-month streak of year-over-year increases in travel by U.S. residents to Canada.
The uptick comes as the two countries remain in a trade dispute. The reporting notes that the U.S. introduced bans on imports of certain Canadian goods in the previous month, including most Canadian-made booze, dairy byproducts and some motorcycles, alongside tariffs, with Canada later announcing retaliatory tariffs on Sept. 8. It says both countries accused each other of making eleventh-hour changes to a trade agreement after Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended talks in August.
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