As the second largest country in the world, Canada has a very large domestic and foreign tourism industry. From sea to shining sea, Canada contains a very large variety of stunning landscapes, adventure, food, arts and history. Tourism is extremely important to any economy as it brings monies in from outside sources, provides many jobs to people in those desirable areas and expands our knowledge of the world. The Canadian Tourism Commission carefully advertises to different countries based on the general interest of the population there. For example, the advertise the superb skiing in the Canadian Rockies to Australian's and you will find that many of the hills are even employed by foreigners. 
As you can see from the pie chart to the left, visitors from the United States account for most of the tourism in Canada. In fact, according to the numbers from the Canadian Tourism Commissions webpage, in August 2012 Americans accounted for 84% of all Canadian Visits. That's just over 1.8 million Americans who travelled north of the boarder.
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| Data source: Canadian Tourism Commission |
The chart to the right shows the total number of visitors that came from all other countries, excluding the USA. The United Kingdom, France and Germany are fairly wealthy countries if you factor in the income per capita, and this could be the reason why their visitation is higher than other countries. Personally, if I lived in a place like Australia, I'm not so sure I'd have any desire to leave either... especially on a day like today! (Minus 18 and snowing like crazy.)
The total number of visitors is up 7.4% from August 2011. I believe that this in large part due to the Canadian dollar being on par with the US dollar and also because the recession from last year has nearly come to an end and the economy is quickly recovering.
Tourism to Canada is a very elastic demand as there are many factors that could persuade a person to travel somewhere else, or not to travel at all. How much is it going to cost, can we afford it, would we rather go somewhere else are all questions that people ask themselves first. Effective marketing is very important in maintaining and industry, including tourism
Reference:
Site accessed on November 9, 2012
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