WASHINGTONĀ ā America now has another freedom fighter named John Adams. He's fighting for the freedom to visit Canada, and he's doing it in a very American way: by taking out television ads.
The retired magazine publisher from Florida owns a home on Vancouver Island that he can't visit because of the Covid-19 restrictions on cross-border travel, and he's tired of it. So he has produced and paid forĀ a 30-second ad, which will be appearing on CNN, Fox and Spectrum News in the Buffalo area in the coming days. The ad features a picture of his house and the words "Access Denied"Ā ā and a stern message for President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:
āStop hurting the economy and costing us jobs. Open the border now."
It remains to be seen whether a 70-year-old retiree with an ad budget can do what Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Rep. Brian Higgins and the Buffalo Niagara Partnership have not been able to do: prompt Canada and the U.S. to come up with a quick plan to reopen a border that's been largely closed for nearly 14 months because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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But Adams is more than happy to try.Ā
"I just know that citizen activism works," Adams said in a phone interview. "And most people just don't take the initiative; some are ambivalent or lazy or don't know how. And I try to do things that gives people a way to get engaged in the process."
To that end, he's started a GoFundMe page to pay for more ads.
"The ads need to run throughout the Buffalo area and beyond and they need to continue running until President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau agree on a plan to open the border safely," he said on that page.
Adams said in a phone interview that he decided to air the ads in the Buffalo area for both political and geographical reasons. It's where Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat, have based their push to reopen the border, and where the issue has received the most media coverage. What's more, word of an ad airing in Buffalo would be more likely to reach huge Canadian population centers than news from other American markets would be.
"I get the sense that Buffalo is kind of the epicenter of where all the activity is going on" regarding the border closure, Adams said.
Adams' ad is born of both frustration and experience. He and his wife are used to spending their summers at their expansive, isolated property on Vancouver Island, which they haven't been able to visit since 2019.
"There's nothing that I dream of about more than going to my property," Adams said.
Adams also owns a number of rental properties in Florida, so he was understandably frustrated when Gov. Ron DeSantis blocked vacation rentals during the early days of the pandemic in March 2020. In response, Adams produced an ad that ran in Florida's state capital urging DeSantis to "end your unfair ban now."
Last May, DeSantis did just that.
"Letās make the same thing happen on the Canadian border and letās start it in Buffalo," Adams said on his GoFundMe page.
The ad tries to add up the damage wreaked by the border's closure: lost jobs, closed businesses and, of course, frustrated homeowners.
āPrime Minister Trudeau: We own a home in Canada we haven't seen in over a year because the border is still closed," the ad says.
Higgins has heard similar pleas from many people in his districtĀ ā and he's every bit as frustrated about the continued border closure as Adams is.
"The Biden administration said that they would have a plan in 14 days four months ago, and there's no plan" to open the border, Higgins said. "I don't know why they're not moving toward developing a plan. It's detrimental to the U.S. economy, it's detrimental to the Canadian economy."
That being the case, Higgins was happy to see Adams' ad.
"I thought it was of good quality, and I think it hit on all the issues that we've been talking about for the past several months," Higgins said.
Adams isn't stopping at buying ads, either. He's already spoken with staffers from Higgins' office as well as Schumer's, and he hopes to eventually run the ad in other markets such as Detroit and northern Washington state. The more the ad runs, the more political pressure that Biden and Trudeau will feel to open the border, he said.
For now, though, Adams' ad buy is a small one. He said he paid $1,145 to have the ad created, as well as another $1,000 to have the ad run four times on CNN, three on Fox and 23 on the Spectrum news channel.
To hear Adams tell it, he's investing in more than a campaign to reopen the border. He's investing in a campaign to bring two nations, long the closest of allies, back together again.
"In some ways, the border closure has been almost like the Berlin Wall," he said. "It's separated two societies."
