Tourist overload: Some world destinations want more visitors - and some really, really don't

Welcome toTheNational Today newsletter, which takes a closer look at what's happening around some of the day's most notable stories. Sign up hereand it will be delivered directly to your inbox Monday to Friday.

TODAY:

• While some world destinations are struggling to attract tourists, other places just wish people would go elsewhere.
• It's a big week for Canada's economy, with politicians grappling with everything from the Trans Mountain Pipeline decision to the new NAFTA deal.
• A new First Nations solar farm will be Manitoba's largest when it starts operating in a few weeks.
• Missed The National last night? Watch it here.

Tourism

Summer officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere tomorrow. But vacationers are becoming a year-round problem.

International tourism has grown from around 25 million leisure travellers a year in 1950, to 1.4 billion in 2018.

And the trend fueled by the expanding global middle class and ever-cheaper air travel shows no sign of slowing.

Cruise ship traffic, for example, is forecast to hit 30 million passengers in 2019, 1.5 million more people than the year before, with 18 more massive vessels joining company fleets.

However, our collective desire to see the world is causing a whole host of problems.

Some beauty spots have too many visitors.

Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million, is grappling with an annual influx of 30 million people. Amsterdam, which has under a million residents, welcomed 18 million visitors in 2018, and forecasts crowds of 42 million by 2030. And Venice, which has dwindled to a full-time population of around 55,000, is swarmed by 20 million looky-loos each year.

Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice, is so fed up that he's threatening to ask UNESCO to "blacklist" his watery, world-heritage-site city, in a bid to force the Italian government to divert cruise ships to the mainland. (Last month, four people were injured when a monster ship steamed over a smaller tourist boat as it tried to dock.)

His counterpart in the overcrowded Belgian canal town of Bruges (8.3 million annual visitors) moved to cap the number cruise ships earlier this month, and killed tourism advertising campaigns.

"We have to control the influx more if we don't want it to become a complete Disneyland," Mayor Dirk De fauw told a local newspaper.

Some people think that the rise of Airbnb is making things much worse.

Ten European cities have written a joint letter to the EU asking for continent-wide regulations to halt the "explosive growth" of the type of short-term, private vacation rentals that the website facilitates. Berlin has 22,500 listings. Barcelona, 18,000. And Paris, just under 60,000.

(In comparison, a new McGill University study says Airbnb rentals across Canada effectively removed 31,000 homes and apartments from the long-term rental market in 2018.)

Although, evidence suggests that destinations sometimes become hot for reasons beyond any civic leader's control.

Chernobyl is currently experiencing a tourism surge, thanks to HBO's dramatic retelling of the deadly 1986 nuclear reactor meltdown.

And the success of Game of Thrones has led to tourism booms in its various shoot locations, including Spain, Northern Ireland, and Croatia, where the national government has just relaxed its quota for foreign workers to deal with the surge of visitors.

It doesn't always last.

Iceland, which was firmly in the too-many-tourists or perhaps just too many Justin Bieber fans category, now finds itself suddenly dealing with a bust after the March collapse of Wow Air, its discount airline.

The number of visitors dropped by almost a quarter in May, and the Reykjavik international airport laid off 315 workers. Forecasts suggest an overall 17 per cent tourism decline for 2019, leading to fears that the country will fall into recession.

Sometimes, politics is to blame.

Donald Trump's trade war with Beijing led to the first drop in Chinese tourism to the U.S. in 15 years. And the economic effects of the 5.7 per cent decline are likely to be felt far beyond restaurants and hotels the Chinese buy about one-third of the world's luxury goods each year, spending more than $115 billion US on their foreign jaunts.

There are fears that Brexit will put a big dent in Europe's tourism numbers. Almost 56 million Britons visit the continent each year, while 25 million Europeans cross the Channel in the other direction.

Violence also, understandably, kills the holiday vibe.

Sri Lanka saw mass hotel and flight cancellations in the wake of the coordinated Easter attacks on churches, and the rioting that followed.

Mali, once a hot destination because of its world heritage sites, has seen tourism dwindle to virtually nothing after seven years of fighting with Jihadist extremists and ethnic militas.

And sometimes even the hint of menace can empty out beach resorts. Just ask authorities in the Dominican Republic, who are dealing with the fallout from the U.S. media's coverage of a spate of mysterious tourist deaths and the shooting of former Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz.

Tourism has always been an unequal game, even within destination countries.

Japan has seen the number of foreign visitors increase from 6.8 million in 2009 to 31 million in 2018, and 40 million are predicted for next year as the country hosts the Summer Olympics.

But they almost all go to just three places Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo.

The regional disparity has led to calls to legalize sex tourism as a way to help save Japan's dying small towns.

The switch could bring in $24 billion US a year, proponents say.

At Issue

It's a big week for Canada's economy, with politicians grappling with everything from the Trans Mountain Pipeline decision to the new NAFTA deal, The National co-host Rosemary Barton writes.

The House adjourned today so MPs will be packing up and hitting the road, but there is a real chance they may have to come back and deal with the ratification of the new NAFTA deal.

Yesterday Mexico became the first country to give it the green light, but Canada wants to align its next moves with the United States.

This explains, in part, why Justin Trudeau is having a quick meeting with Donald Trump today.

Twenty-five minutes in the Oval Office to talk about how to get Congress onside with NAFTA, and whether the president might be willing to help Canada deal with China. Namely getting China to release the two Canadians being detained for no real reason.

But that's just one of basically a million things that has happened this week in Canadian politics.

This is the same week the TMX expansion got the go-ahead (again), Andrew Scheer released his long-awaited climate plan, Michael Cooper allegedly made some derogatory comments, and oh yeah, Doug Ford blew up his cabinet to deal with mounting unpopularity and public frustration.

Tonight is also one of our last At Issues for a while. We need to go tools-down before the election so we have energy to get through it all, but we're not sure for how long because given the political manoeuvring heading towards an election, you just never know what's going to happen.

For all of those reasons and more, we will group some members of the squad around the oversized desk in Toronto and talk it out. Andrew Coyne, Chantal Hbert, Althia Ray and Paul Wells will be there tonight. Hope you will too.

- Rosemary Barton

• WATCH: At Issue tonight on The National on CBC Television and streamed online

• Like this newsletter?Sign upand have it delivered by email.
• You may also like our early-morning newsletter, the Morning Briefstart the day with the news you need in one quick and concise read.Sign up here.

Going solar

A new First Nations solar farm will be Manitoba's largest when it starts operating in a few weeks, reporter Cameron MacIntosh writes.

It's a good thing we brought the drone.

Getting a view from up in the sky is really the only way to appreciate the scale of what is about to go online in Fisher River Cree Nation, about 200 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

The community has raised more than $2 million in grants and loans to be on the leading edge of the green economy.

Looking down even on a party sunny day, the sun glistens off large banks of black photovoltaic cells. Each one is about 2 metres long and they're lined up in rows stacked two high, angled at 45 degrees, about 100 metres across and 20 rows deep.

The whole array covers 2.5 hectares check out these drone shots:

Fisher River solar array

5 years ago

Duration 0:40

Check out drone footage of Fisher River Cree Nation's solar array, which will generate a megawatt of electricity when it's operational in July.

Walking between the rows of panels, Chief David Crane explains the community was first set up here more than a century ago to give Manitoba's Northern Cree a start at farming, but the land was never all that fertile. He's hoping it's better suited to a 21st century economy.

Fisher River won't be powered directly by these panels rather, it will sell energy into Manitoba's provincial grid. But it's hoping to prove a community this size can produce enough power to be self-sustaining, and be a player in renewable energy.

In further-flung places, that holds a lot of promise.

Solar is growing in Canada, but it is still a miniscule contributor to our energy system. According to Natural Resources Canada, in 2017 it accounted for 2,911 megawatts, less that 0.5 per cent of Canada's total electricity generation.

One of the biggest opportunities for solar is in the places in Canada where powerlines simply don't reach.

Much of the North, above the 60th parallel, still generates electricity by burning diesel fuel. It's expensive and carbon-heavy. The hope is projects like Fisher River can help prove scale, demonstrating that enough energy to support remote towns can be produced locally giving northern communities energy independence that has so far been elusive.

There are still some big challenges. The sun just doesn't shine all the time, and reliability and energy storage are still issues, for example.

However, the technology is improving. Today's modern solar panels have been shown to work well at northern latitudes and in cold conditions, and while you need more space for panels to produce more power, that's something many remote communities have in abundance.

In Fisher River there's room to more than double the size of the farm, and if the initial installation is a success, the next step may be using solar panels to directly meet the energy needs of the community.

When the on-switch in Fisher River is flipped next month, it will be the largest solar array in Manitoba. In the meantime, read our online feature and check out our story about the project on The National tonight.

- Cameron MacIntosh

This story is part of a CBC News series entitled In Our Backyard, which looks at the effects climate change is having in Canada, from extreme weather events to how it's reshaping our economy:

• EXPLAINER: What is climate change?
• INTERACTIVE: What climate change in Canada looks like
• READ: 'It's a problem for society': Climate change is making some homes uninsurable
• READ: How climate change is thawing the 'glue that holds the northern landscape together'

Quote of the moment

"An attack on Huawei. Where did it come from? And what is the point of it? The only point is to hold back China's development, which has become a global competitor for another global power the United States. The same thing is happening in respect to Russia and will be happening going forward."

- Russian President Vladimir Putin draws a connection between America's sanctions and trade wars in his annual, televised question-and-answer session.

What The National is reading

• Iran's Revolutionary Guard shoots down U.S. drone amid tensions (CBC)
• U.K. arms sales to Saudi Arabia unlawful, declares court (Guardian)
• Deepfakes of Canadian politicians emerge on YouTube (CBC)
• Trump and Trudeau to talk trade and China and try to get along (Washington Post)
• Turkish court sentences hundreds of coup "ringleaders" (Deutsche Welle)
• Berlin plans five-year ban on rent hikes to fight gentrification (LATimes)
• Namibia to build world's largest diamond-mining ship (AfricaNews)
• Two people have died hunting treasure in the Rocky Mountains (CNN)

Today in history

June 20, 1972: Bo Diddley's musical inspiration

Bo Diddley travels light, walking off the plane with just his guitar under his arm. He talks a little about his musical inspirations, paying a very backhanded compliment to John Lee Hooker. "I said, if this cat can play, then I know I can play." And then he improvises a song about peace while a woman makes him a cheese sandwich.

Bo Diddley's musical inspiration

52 years ago

Duration 4:02

When rock 'n' roll pioneer Bo Diddley arrives in Toronto for a concert, CBC-TV's Weekday joins him for an interview - and an impromptu jam session.

Sign up hereand have The National Today newsletter delivered directly to your inbox Monday to Friday.

Please send your ideas, news tips, rants, and compliments tothenationaltoday@cbc.ca.