"U.S. CUSTOMS TORONTO AIRPORT TOP: Spring Break, 2025 BOTTOM: Spring Break, 2024," reads the caption of a March 13, 2025 Facebook photo.
The post compares two photos: one of an empty airport lineup area and another supposedly depicting a large mass of people waiting to clear US customs at Toronto Pearson International during spring break 2024. Typically, air travelers from Canada pass through US customs at the airport they are departing from, rather than upon arrival in the United States (archived here).
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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken March 18, 2025
Versions of the claim with the same two pictures appeared on Facebook, Threads, X, Bluesky and in a Substack post as Canada-US relations are under strain.
President Donald Trump repeated threats to the northern country's sovereignty have fueled strong anti-US hostility north of the border.
After Trump imposed new tariffs and Canada responded in kind, Canadians began boycotting American products and considering less travel to the United States. Statistics Canada reported a 23 percent drop in car trips and a 2.4 percent dip in round-trip air travel across the border in February 2025 compared to the previous year (archived here).
The simmering tensions over trade have already sparked misinformation about Canadian tariffs and their supposed effects in the United States.
Similarly, the photos circulating on social media do not portray an accurate comparison between the volume of spring break travelers in 2024 and 2025 -- the image of the busy US customs line was taken in 2009.
A reverse image search reveals several appearances of the photo credited to Frank Gunn and distributed by the Canadian Press and Associated Press news wires with captions saying it was taken on December 27, 2009 (archived here and here), a busy holiday travel period. Additionally, local media reports from that time describe a security incident at Toronto Pearson that brought customs lines to a near-standstill.
The earliest version of the empty lineup area photo AFP was able to find was in a Reddit post which the user claimed they took mid-morning at the Toronto airport on March 8, 2025. The image contained no timestamp or other data that would confirm when it was taken.
AFP reached out to the user, but a response was not forthcoming.
Local media images from Toronto Pearson at around the same time showed some activity at US customs lines and reported that Canadians' canceled travel plans to the United States could be attributed to Canada's weakened dollar, along with the trade dispute.
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.