VIDEO: Las Vegas Mayor Called a Press Conference Begging Canadians to "Come Back" Yesterday. Yeah, No...

Why Canadians Ghosted Vegas (and America) what it’s costing, and what it would take to come back.

Mayor Shelly Berkley said, “SORRY” to Canada yesterday, but she forgot to say why.

Las Vegas begged Canadians to come back. We heard you. We love you. But we’re not crossing that line while the annexation talk, tariff tantrums, and border theater are the price of admission. Here’s the quiet part, out loud—and the bill that’s coming due.

City Hall Confessional

Mayor Shelly Berkley stepped in front of the mics and did what no Vegas mayor wants to do: beg. We love you. We need you. We miss you. Our market went from “a faucet to a drip.” She even tossed in a big Canadian “SORRY,” then never said what she was sorry about.

So we will.

This isn’t about Donald Trump calling our prime minister “Governor.” (Cute.) It’s about a sustained, ugly message to Canada that’s been loud, deliberate, and costly. We heard it. We believed you. And then we booked trips to literally anywhere else.

Canadians Only Needed ONE Reason To Boycott VEGAS/America, But Here Are 10 More:

1) Trump (Annexation talk).
At least twenty-three times this year, Trump dangled the idea of making Canada the 51st state—“one way or another.” We treat threats from the world’s biggest military like threats. We’re united behind the flag and support Canada. Trump’s America doesn’t want or deserve our respect. And we talk with our wallets, so we got busy helping each other. Trump left us no choice.

2) “Canada isn’t a real country.”
Elon Musk hit send, then delete. The contempt landed anyway. Canadians got the message: if we’re not real, our money must not be, either. No problem.

3) “We don’t need anything from Canada.”
Except, apparently, our labor, our critical minerals, our water, our trade routes, our allies, our firefighters, our tourists, and our hockey players. Other than that? Sure. We’ll hold you to that…

4) “Canada is NASTY.”
If your whole political aesthetic is insult‑opera, don’t be shocked when the neighbors decide not to drop by for the weekend. But Trump is right. We are nasty. Just ask Las Vegas and Jack Daniels.

5) Punishing tariffs & tariff threats.
Call it policy. We call it a tax on families, small businesses, and cross‑border livelihoods. Either way, it’s money out of our pockets and off your tables.

6) The “one‑time $1B tribute” rumor.
Call it an “extortion‑adjacent” play: pay up to make a tariff problem vanish. Whether floated or fumbled, Canadians heard it and forced Mark Carney to take a hard pass. It’s why we elected him.

7) Gaslighting about a northern crime wave.
Fentanyl hub? Human trafficking corridor? That smear job might play on cable news, but it lands like a brick up here. Savvy Canadians know that those excuses are ops to create an “US vs THEM” national emergency scenario to justify ‘action’ against Canada. Pure theater of the (fascist) absurd. We’re smarter than the Average American, so we do things like “read.”

8) Militarize the border—again.
We lived through the “call in the troops” trial balloon once. Floating it again isn’t a negotiation tactic. It’s a threat that comes from gaslighting Americans into the idea that Canada is a “threat” to America’s national security (see reason #7).

9) The ambassador who sneers.
When your designated envoy treats Canada like the country that “started” the trade war, don’t be shocked when we stop shopping. Pete Hoekstra isn’t an ambassador; he’s a MAGA operative running around the country creating chaos where there is none by towing the MAGA company line. He can FRO anytime, too.

10) Police‑state vibes aren’t a vibe.
Authoritarian cosplay, protest crackdowns, and “papers, please” energy at the border: not exactly a Vegas welcome wagon. I don’t know of a single Canadian comfortable enough to cross into the United States right now. Not one.

11) People we know in ICE limbo.
Word travels. So do WhatsApp screenshots. Detained Canadians (over 120). Call them detention centers if you like; families call them nightmares. Opaque locations. Lawyers chasing shadows. Invasive searches and border detentions. Massive rise in mass shootings and violent Crimes, and Trump’s new police state Gestapo. Not an overwhelmingly exciting destination for Canadians seeking a safe and enjoyable vacation. Fuck, Girl Guides of Canada just cancelled every US trip to the US for the next three years due to the multicultural nature of GGoC’s membership. And with SOCTUS’s recent ruling that Trump can target anyone in the United States of America by Race, the GGoC read the writing on the wall a month early.

Bottom line: We didn’t boycott buffets. We boycotted the regime. And the Canadian boycott beating will continue until morale in the US improves.

The Damage in Las Vegas, in Plain Numbers

Canada is Las Vegas’s #1 international market. Last year, about 1.423 million Canadians visited. The average Canadian air visitor spends roughly $1,199 in‑market, and nearly all of that spend stays in Vegas because—newsflash—Vegas is the destination.

What’s changed:

• Over the past ten months, Canadian visitation has declined by approximately 35% year-over-year.

• Summer got rough: carriers cut capacity to LAS, and Canadian traffic fell to nearly 20%.

• Citywide, peak-season visitation turned double-digit negative year-over-year. That context is why the Mayor was at the podium. BEGGING.

A conservative, back‑of‑the‑napkin loss for Vegas (last 10 months):
≈ $213 million in direct Canadian visitor spending, gone.

Where that money used to land:

• Lodging: ≈ $61.9M

• Food & Beverage: ≈ $44.8M

• Entertainment & Gaming: ≈ $57.6M

• Retail Shopping: ≈ $17.1M

• Local Transport: ≈ $19.2M

• Other (fees, tips, incidentals): ≈ $12.8M

And that’s just direct spend. The knock‑ons—jobs, tax receipts, vendor orders—multiply from there.

Business travel tanked, too.
Roughly 14% of Canadian visitors come for conventions and work. Our boycott math suggests ~25,000 fewer Canadian business travelers to Vegas in the last 10 months alone—about $30M in spend that normally fills room blocks, F&B minimums, expo floors, and after‑hours shows.

Trendline, not a blip.
Spring softened. June sputtered as airline seats disappeared. July tanked. August did not deliver a miracle. That’s a line, not noise.

It’s Not Just Vegas

Nationwide tourism: The U.S. is pacing toward millions fewer Canadian visits this year and billions in lost Canadian spending—the kind that keeps restaurants open in Florida, pays housekeepers in Arizona, tips bell staff in California, fills ski towns in Vermont, and keeps mom‑and‑pop diners alive along I‑5 and I‑95.

Airlines: Cross‑border bookings slid into the low‑teens negative, then carriers pulled capacity. Fewer flights, fewer weekends, fewer impulse trips.

Food, alcohol, retail: The “Buy Canadian” effect is real. We still love bourbon and baseball caps, but in grocery aisles and bars, a quiet switch flipped. Canadian alternatives are getting the nod. That’s not a boycott press release; it’s a habit change.

Procurement: Provinces and federal buyers are pivoting where they can—favoring domestic and allied suppliers. That’s years of contracts drifting away from U.S. firms without a press conference.

Defense & industry: Canada is leaning into domestic manufacturing and transatlantic partners for equipment and munitions. That means U.S. primes—think the usual suspects—see a thinner pipeline than they expected. You can’t talk annexation on Monday and expect a PO on Tuesday.

What Would Bring Us Back

1. Get rid of the pedophile/felon occupying the white house. Full stop.

2. Drop the tariff theatrics. Stop taxing families to score points.

3. Demilitarize the rhetoric. The northern border is not a stage for strongman cosplay.

4. Send an ambassador who wants a friend, not a fight.

5. Make the welcome real. Clear, fair entry. Fewer horror stories. More hospitality and say the f****** part out loud. “Sorry for our fascist sexual predator, dotard President. Vegas isn’t Trump, even though Nevada helped put him and his Regime in Office.

   Do all that, and we’re still not coming unless number 1 happens first. There’s literally not a goddamned thing any mayor or governor can say to a country hell bent on making America bleed out to force the removal of your rapist, fascist, MAD KING.

Do that, and the faucets open. Canadians are simple: treat us like allies, and we show up with our wallets and our “eh”s. Treat us like a punchline; we stay home, build, and vacation in Italy, France, Portugal, Mexico, and Spain (like I did this year). We also have casinos and strip joints in Canada. Like, Everywhere.

We’re good.

The Part Where I Speak to the Mayor

Mayor Berkley, this isn’t personal. We know you didn’t write the script; you inherited the hangover. But you asked for Canadians, and Canadians tell the truth.

We love Vegas. We love(d) America. We want to come back. We want to fill your hotels, crush your buffets, tip your dealers, cheer your performers, and melt in the heat on the walk between shows because that’s part of the charm.

But we’re not crossing a line that’s patrolled by contempt.

Canadians love Vegas, we love(d) America and want to come back, but we're going to ride this one out in the great white north for the next 3.2 years, at least. Sorry, not sorry.