EU Invitation to Canada Raises One Question: Travel

Canada enters the EU orbit, and travel logistics are all that matters

What does the public question when a country enters into the European institutional orbit? Trinc Canada's acceptance of the EU invitation to become an associated member, one participant observed that the majority interest focused on a single point: whether this status would allow travel to the country like any other Member State, using a national ID and European health card.
That same participant found no questions regarding energy, tariffs, investment, or business. Tourism overshadowed every other consideration.

What it means for travel that Canada is an associated member of the EU

The episode acts as a thermometer. Some dismiss it with evidence that for most people, travel, bars, and dining are what truly matter.

Another thread of the conversation involved a rejection of immigration that is unrelated to the main issue and relies on generalizations without data.

Travel is not tourism

There is a distinction that must be made: traveling and tourism are not the same, and there are few travelers in the strict sense today, according to one participant. The linguistic consequence is already anticipated. Just as dictionaries incorporated 'vigorexia' and 'tanorexia' to name specific excesses, some predict the arrival of 'travelmonger' to describe the travel fever as compulsive consumption. The word does not yet exist. But the phenomenon, according to this reading, does.

Expensive oil and the behavioral correction to come

The most uncomfortable prediction is energetic, according to another participant: in a scenario of expensive and scarce oil, travel habits will eventually correct themselves. This is a hypothesis, not a consummated fact.

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Perhaps travel is the last shared aspiration. Or perhaps we never wanted to travel as much as we wanted to talk about it.