We each got our CA$39 UK Electronic Travel Authorisations approved ahead of our November cruise departure from Southampton. The process was painless enough, but clicking through the screens made me realize how thoroughly the travel landscape has shifted beneath our feet.
The romantic notion of "visa-free" travel is officially a relic. Governments and tourism boards still toss the phrase around, but let's call an ETA what it actually is: a visa in a digital trench coat. The only real difference between the old paperwork and the modern ETA is that instead of a bored consular officer stamping an ink pad in a basement, a server farm scans your passport chip, runs an automated security check, and extracts a fee before you are even permitted to look at a boarding pass. The border is no longer an arrival desk; it is a computer program standing between your passport and the departure gate.
Which brings me to Brazil.
I have spent the last few hours navigating the Brazilian eVisa portal, getting all our details queued up. The file is currently sitting in a holding pattern while I review everything with Jay before pulling the trigger, because Brasília wants roughly CAD 113 each for the privilege of stepping off the MSC Virtuosa for the bulk of our winter in Rio.
How did Canadians end up back in the visa line? It is a textbook lesson in diplomatic tit-for-tat. Back in 2019, Jair Bolsonaro unilaterally scrapped visa requirements for tourists from Canada, the United States, Australia, and Japan. The theory was that unilateral generosity would unleash a massive wave of high-spending visitors. That tourism windfall never quite materialized.
When Lula returned to the presidency, Brazil’s foreign affairs department dusted off its absolute favourite doctrine: strict diplomatic reciprocity. A stamp for a stamp, and a fee for a fee. If your country forces Brazilian citizens to submit bank statements, jump through consular hoops, and pay a stiff fee just to visit Vancouver or Toronto, Brazil will happily return the courtesy. Japan read the writing on the wall, negotiated a mutual visa-waiver treaty, and kept their passports exempt.
Ottawa, true to form, took an entirely different path.
Immigration Canada does not do diplomatic courtesies; it does cold, risk-averse actuarial tables. Instead of offering a mutual waiver, Ottawa produced a classic half-measure: Brazilians could use Canada's inexpensive eTA, but only if they already held a valid American visa. In other words, we outsourced our vetting to the Americans and expected Brasília to be grateful. Unsurprisingly, Brazil found the arrangement condescending. When the reciprocity axe finally fell, Canadians were promptly marched back to the payment window.
Before I finally hand over CAD 225 to settle Ottawa’s diplomatic bar tab, Jay and I have a little evening date with the laptop. We will sit down together, inspect each other's uploaded mugshots, and make sure neither of our neutral expressions offends the consular algorithm. After all, if we have to pay an entrance fee to the Southern Hemisphere, we might as well look fabulous doing it.