January travel up from a year ago, but still way below pre-pandemic levels: StatsCan

The number of people travelling to Canada in January 2022 was up from a year earlier, but remained well below levels before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new data shared by Statistics Canada.

The agency reports that the number of trips by U.S. residents to Canada in January was 218,600, up from 86,500 a year earlier, but still a fraction of the 1.2 million in January 2020 before the global pandemic was declared.

Canadians returned from 690,200 trips to the U.S. in January this year, more than two and a half times the trips the year earlier (265,000), but that is still far below the 3.1 million trips taken in January 2020.

In January, while the number of return air trips by Canadian residents rose more than three and a half times from 2021 to 261,100 in 2022, this was over one-quarter (27.9 per cent) of such trips from the same month in 2020, before the pandemic, the agency reports.

In January, 463,700 Canadian residents returned from visiting overseas, almost three times the number in January 2021 (160,500), but just over one-third (34.1 per cent) of the 1.4 million returning Canadians observed in January 2020.

Canadian travel restrictions will loosen on April 1 when fully vaccinated international travellers will no longer be required to present a pre-entry negative COVID-19 test before boarding a plane or arriving at a land border.