Tofino is one of Canada’s most economically successful coastal tourism destinations and one of its least livable communities for the people who make that success possible. That paradox is the entry point for understanding how coastal tourism finance actually works in Canada.
Industry Profiles
On a summer morning in Victoria, a cruise ship docks at Ogden Point. A whale watching company loads twelve people onto a rigid inflatable. An Indigenous-led cultural tour is about to begin. All three are coastal tourism. Almost nothing else about their economics is the same.
Industry Profiles
The problem is not that any single operator is doing something wrong. The problem is that the sum of individually legitimate decisions can produce outcomes that none of them, assessed alone, would justify. The whale does not appear in any balance sheet.
