Good morning.
Next week, some 15,000 people will pour into Vancouver to attend the largest convention of the year in the city.
It’s the first time Web Summit has hosted a gathering for delegates from the tech world in here. The organization is holding five events this year: Toronto and Vancouver are the North American gatherings, and the others are in Rio de Janeiro, Qatar and Hong Kong.
But attending a conference in North America has become fraught with the dramatic changes spurred by the Trump administration. Potential delegates living in the United States who are not U.S. citizens may not want to cross the border into Canada and risk not being able to return.
Some Canadians and those from elsewhere are being advised by their employers to be cautious about entering the U.S. Viral stories about visiting academics and professionals being grilled or turned back at the border, the gutting of various American agencies, and scrutiny of all academic activities have all been destabilizing for almost every sector.
So Web Summit organizers likely had a bit of anxiety, wondering what the impact on all of this might have been on attendance.
The outcome has been surprising. The Vancouver conference has had no trouble reaching its goal of 15,000 participants. They just aren’t the participants they originally anticipated, Frances Bula writes this week.
Organizers of the Web Summit say the number of American delegates attending has remained strong, but there has also been a strong contingent of international registrants.
Summit founder and chief executive officer Paddy Cosgrave says U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies have motivated those who want to share ideas with colleagues around the world to underline that commitment by gathering despite the challenges.
“Trump’s mostly ill-conceived tariff war, while headline-grabbing, backfired,” Cosgrave said in an e-mail.
“The rest of the world is just moving on. Eager to trade, eager to build partnerships.”
Cities across Canada are reporting the convention business going two ways.
Some American academic and business organizations are cancelling events in Canada, fearing criticism for spending money outside the U.S., problems with delegates being able to get back into the United States, or concerns about tariffs on the products and booths they bring in for shows.
But other events are being rescheduled in Canada after being cancelled in the U.S., as organizers worry that Canadian or other non-U.S. delegates can’t or won’t cross the border.
Virginie De Visscher, the executive director of business events for Destination Canada, said there has been a cooling of delegate registration for 2025 events in Canada. But U.S. attendance remains surprisingly steady.
“Uncertainty is the key word these days,” she said.
Montreal convention organizers say they’ve seen more than half a dozen events rescheduled to their city from the U.S., with Toronto reporting a similar trend.
The Vancouver Convention Centre recently had four groups express interest in coming to Vancouver for their 2026, 2027 or 2028 meetings, rather than the U.S., said Claire Smith, the centre’s vice-president for sales and marketing: “They decided Canada was a more inviting country at the moment.”
But the centre lost out on hopes it had for eight other American groups, each expecting a thousand attendees or more.
“We haven’t had cancellations but we’ve seen lost opportunities,” Smith said.
The eight, all corporate or technology groups, were concerned about possibly being charged tariffs on the goods they would bring to the show and simply figured it would be cheaper to stay close to home.
For Canadian delegates who had plans to travel to conferences in the U.S. for professional development, some are having to change their plans based on their employers’ concerns.
A number of Canadian academic, medical and business organizations have instituted policies prohibiting or restricting travel to the U.S.
In Vancouver, for example, Providence Health Care, which operates 18 facilities including major hospitals such as St. Paul’s and St. Joseph’s, has a policy discouraging travel to the United States.
“There has been general all-staff messaging to minimize travel to the U.S.,” Providence spokesperson Shaf Hussain said.
Heather Dow, a senior manager at Events & Management Plus Inc.’s Ontario branch, said the current situation, which seems to be pulling people and countries apart instead of bringing them together, is a sad and disturbing one.
“People are in mourning,” she said. “It’s like the pandemic all over again.”
This is the weekly British Columbia newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.