Against a backdrop of threats and insults from President Trump, Canadians have made a point of displaying national pride by shunning cross-border travel to the United States in favor of domestic tourism.
But as many Canadians will tell you, flying within the country tends to be prohibitively expensive.
The airfare from Toronto to Vancouver can often cost around the same as a ticket to Mexico or Europe, enough to nudge many would-be domestic tourists toward international travel. That was among the responses 1,500 people shared with the Competition Bureau during a yearlong study of Canada’s airline market, the results of which were released on Thursday.
Air Canada, the top carrier, and WestJet Airlines, the next biggest, make up the largest share of domestic air traffic.
“The level of concentration in the industry means that on many routes, travelers have limited choice and pay higher fares than they might in a more competitive environment,” Anthony Durocher, a deputy commissioner at the bureau, said during a briefing with reporters. “Our analysis clearly shows that added competition brings important benefits.”
Among those benefits are reductions in fares of up to 9 percent when new carriers enter the market, Mr. Durocher said, though he noted that those companies had found little success.
The airline market study began after the February 2024 shuttering of Lynx Air, a discount carrier that had started in 2022. Swoop and Sunwing Airlines, subsidiaries of WestJet, also recently shut down and merged into the parent airline.
Of the bureau’s 10 recommendations, one that seemed to grab the most headlines in Canada was a suggestion to allow access to domestic routes for companies that are 100 percent foreign owned. The companies would still be required to use Canadian crews and obey domestic regulations, but the change would encourage competition in a manner that was a success in Australia, the report noted.
But critics of the report said the foreign ownership recommendation could undermine Canadian jobs.
“Such a scheme would enable foreign airlines to cherry-pick money-generating routes at the expense of less profitable regional connections that bind our country and are the backbone of the Canadian economy,” Tim Perry, president of the Canadian section of the Air Line Pilots Association, said in a statement.
But it’s unlikely that foreign carriers would be interested in serving the domestic routes that are most in need of competition — those that serve places other than the country’s major cities — because those are not as profitable, said Keldon Bester, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, a research group founded in 2022.
He said the other recommendations were more realistic. Those included addressing the restrictions that prevent smaller airports from offering international flights, reducing the transport minister’s discretion to disregard antitrust findings during airline mergers and increasing transparency by publishing airline performance data.
“The bureau did a good job of being bold and suggesting things that would really shake up the market,” Mr. Bester said.
But the Canadian government is not obligated to take action on any of the recommendations by the Competition Bureau, an independent agency that investigates matters such as false advertising and price-fixing and gives advice to the federal authorities during company mergers.
“Sheltering companies from competition does not create national champions,” Brad Callaghan, an official in the bureau’s policy section, said during the news briefing.
Canada’s expansive geography means that residents of rural and northern communities are especially reliant on air travel for essential needs like medical appointments or employment.
But because the routes are not competitive enough to attract more carriers, Mr. Callaghan said, the government could prioritize lowering of competition barriers to prompt airlines flying on those routes to work harder not to be replaced by more efficient carriers.
The report comes as summer travel is picking up in Canada.
Summer flight bookings from Canada to the United States are down by 21 percent, according to an analysis by The New York Times, and several American cities — from Myrtle Beach, S.C., to Derby Line, Vt. — that are reliant on Canadian tourists are reeling from their absence.
To give more tourists incentives to travel within Canada, the agency that manages Canada’s national parks recently started a new tourism promotion called the Canada Strong Pass, offering free admission to national parks and select museums, 25 percent off camping fees and free or discounted VIA Rail tickets.
Fire Watch
Wildfire evacuees from Flin Flon, Manitoba, a town of 5,000 people, and several First Nations communities in the province are returning home. But out-of-control wildfires continue to burn across northern parts of the Prairies and British Columbia.
Trans Canada
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The Group of 7 summit in Alberta ended with steps to mend the rift between Canada and India, not much progress on added support for Ukraine and an early departure by President Trump, who presented his peers with the difficult task of managing him.
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A Vermont town that loves Canada is feeling the pain of ruptured relations with the country from Mr. Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats. The same goes for a tiny community in Washington State.
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The official tale is that the Canadian-born James Naismith invented basketball. But there’s more to that story, Dan Barry writes.
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Canada donated drones to the Haitian government to combat gang violence, but experts say they are being used illegally.
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Two hikers were killed and three others were injured in a rockslide at Banff National Park in Alberta.
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The Canadian director Celine Song thinks the rom-com movie genre is wrongfully dismissed, so it became the focus of her new film, “Materialists.” Manohla Dargis, The Times’s chief film critic, reviewed it. Ms. Song tells her own love story on the “Modern Love” podcast.
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Can menopause be funny? It is for Meredith MacNeill and Jennifer Whalen, the Canadian stars of the new show “Small Achievable Goals,” playing on CBC.
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“In the Footsteps of the Traveller,” a new book by Chris Cannon, an astronomy educator, unveils the lessons in the stars shared by the Northern Dene people of Alaska and Canada.
Vjosa Isai is a reporter at The Times based in Toronto.
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