Canada dealt foreign tourists a blow yesterday by eliminating the GST rebate for foreign visitors. Though it was among the largest budget cuts a government official defended the move saying that only 939,000 visitors applied for the rebate over a one year period. The Globe and Mail reports:
One of the biggest cuts hits foreign visitors to Canada. The Tories are eliminating the Goods and Services Tax rebate program, which allows foreigners to recoup the GST they pay while in the country.
Mr. McCallum warned that this will discourage tourism, which is already hurting from a stronger Canadian dollar and could be further damaged by pending U.S. border restrictions.
“It’s not the time to give the tourism industry a punch in the nose,” he said.
But the Canada Revenue Agency defended the reduction, saying less than 3 per cent of foreign visitors — 939,000 — applied for rebates in one recent year.
September 26, 2006 
Count me with the 939,000 who took a GST rebate. I visit family in Canada frequently and am not happy about this. If the program is so unimportant, why cut it. I’d guess that most of these visitors are Americans and that the government is just hoping we don’t hear about the cut. The GST there is 7% and some Provinces have a PST too. National Health Care is great for Canadians, but we shouldn’t have to pay for it.
They know you’ll hear about it. Obviously when you try to get a rebate and they tell you that you can’t, you’ll hear about it. They’re just betting it won’t stop you from visiting Canada.
We visit Canada frequently (a couple of times every year) and stay in hotels. The termination of the GST rebate in addition to the Vancouver room tax escalation to 10% will force us to look for more affordable visitor friendly destinations.
John Nychay
Will think twice about visiting or buying goods because of the termination of the rebate.
From what I can tell, the Canadian government has reinstated some of the tax rebate but it’s only for conventions and tours. Forget about us lowly souls that populate hotels & motels, B&Bs, campgrounds, and cottages and bring in millions of tourist dollars. I didn’t even know about the elimination of the program until I was getting a receipt for a week’s lodging. This was the fourth time I’d been to Canada in the course of five years and I had filed twice. Once I did not file because a friend had the lodging in her name and I did not buy enough goods to qualify.
But two previous years that I went up, I spent significant amounts (for me, anyway) on schools supplies and school clothes for my school-aged child. After I was told about the end of the tax rebate I didn’t shop as much as I had planned. I still wasn’t sure about the rebate but when I looked it up I found that my B&B owner was indeed correct.
I’m not likely to take a tour or go to a convention, but I will return to Canada again. I won’t bother to head to the mall to spend much money unless the exchange rate gets better. Why should I pay 14% to 15% tax on something that I spend 5% tax on here? Since I live in Massachusetts I don’t even pay tax on clothing and I can easily go to New Hampshire if I want to save more taxes.
I don’t think I’m alone - we saw far fewer cars with US license plates at the mall, and fewer US cars in general. It’s too bad - between the new US rules on passports, and the Canadain near-elimination of the tax rebate, it will be hard for us to convince anyone they should travel to Canada.
[...] in response to this post, Joanne writes to tell us that the Canadian Government has reinstated rebates for some visitors: [...]