London snowbirds say so long to Sunshine State over Trump's Canada threats

When wintertime calls, go where it's warm.

Every year, more than one million Canadians do just that and head south to the U.S., most often to Florida.

Londoner Dorothy Chabot and her husband were among them. The London, Ont. snowbirds have travelled to the Sunshine State for the past 15 years, owning a condo in Port Charlotte, and more recently, renting at a 55-plus community southwest of Orlando.

But in February, as U.S. President Donald Trump continued threatening punishing tariffs against Canada and annexing it as the 51st state, the couple decided they'd had enough.

"We decided that at the end of February we were not going to sign our lease again. We were going to give it up, and we were going to stay in Canada and be very supportive of our country," Chabot told CBC News.

Chabot said a number of her neighbours were supportive, but recalled a frustrating interaction with one who gleefully told her, "oh Dorothy, can't you just wait 'til you're our 51st state?"

"What (Trump) has said about our country … These are our people. We love our people. We love our country. We're not going back."

It appears Chabot isn't alone.

Alexandra DuPont, a Fort Lauderdale realtor who frequently works with Canadian snowbirds, said she currently has 36 Canadian clients listing condos.

"I've never had this many listings in my life," said DuPont, herself a Canadian expat. At this time of year, she would normally have 10 to 15. "Buyers? I think I have one."

More home purchases in the U.S. are done by Canadians than any other country — 13 per cent from April 2023 to March 2024, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) says. Half of all Canadian purchases were vacation homes, and roughly 41 per cent of sales were in Florida.

Even before Trump returned, however, Canadians were selling their properties because of the weak Loonie and higher insurance costs. At least a quarter of international sales in the aforementioned period were by Canadians, more than double from a year earlier.

DuPont says tariffs and Trump have been cropping up more this month as reasons why clients are listing, but she wonders whether some were already thinking of selling over the Loonie and pulled the trigger because of Trump's threats. 

"A lot of my clients … they'll email me, text me, call me. They want weekly updates. I almost feel helpless. There's no update, there's no showing, there's no offers."