- Ottawa weighing a ban on foreign nationals from crossing the border, will warn Canadians against non-essential travel
- The federal government is poised to all but shut Canada’s borders once again, and is warning Canadians against all non-essential travel.
OTTAWA—The federal government is poised to tighten Canada’s borders once again, weighing a ban on foreign nationals including those from the U.S. from entering Canada.
In a race to stem the spread of the COVID-19 Omicron variant, Ottawa will warn Canadians against all non-essential travel and late Tuesday night, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to premiers, the federal government was reconsidering a broader closure of all entry ports, land and air, to foreigners other than those who are essential workers.
However, Ottawa intends to unveil new travel restrictions that include ramped up border testing and quarantine measures, the Star has learned. Those include requirements of Canadians who do travel abroad to once again produce negative PCR tests even for short trips of 72 hours or less — a condition that was briefly lifted before the onset of the Omicron variant.
Incoming fully vaccinated travellers are to be tested on arrival and will have to quarantine at home while awaiting negative test results.
Following a telephone call between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers Tuesday night, multiple sources said the federal government was set to announce Wednesday when the travel measures are to take effect.
Ottawa is expected to reinstate travel advisories at level three, basically where the country was until October when it began to lift restrictions on fully vaccinated travellers coming and going.
Canadians, permanent residents, their dependants, refugees, and people who are entering under family reunification permits will still have a right of entry, said a source with knowledge of the measures.
On the federal-provincial first ministers’ call Tuesday night, Trudeau told premiers it is critical to reduce travel for non-essential reasons, but he did not indicate it would be an outright closure of borders, said a provincial source.
Two sources told the Star that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney pushed back at federal authorities, challenging the need for the travel measures if the variant was already in Canada.
Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam is said to have explained that the border restrictions will minimize the impact on the short term.
The measures including the ban on foreign nationals were expected to drastically halt the flow of incoming traffic, and buy provinces and territories time to deal with Omicron.
But it appeared after the call that ban was being reconsidered.
Last week, federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told reporters that despite a decision to test all incoming travellers, airports were only able to handle testing for about two-thirds of arrivals.
The main impact of the two measures that were under consideration would be “to significantly drive down the volume of travellers at the border, both air and land arrivals, because we’re also scoping in the U.S.” said one source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the pending announcement.
So the latest moves would allow more if not most people to be tested on arrival.
Some public health authorities have already reported community transmission (not linked to known travel cases) of the Omicron variant in Canada.
That includes Ottawa — where Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland had to bail on an in-person fiscal update speech to the Commons because staffers had tested positive for COVID.
Canadians expect all governments to use “all levers at their disposal so that we do not face the same situation as the U.K., Denmark or Sweden face,” said one insider.
“If we have less people coming in right now, we can do more testing. If we do more testing, we can do more contact tracing, if we do more contact tracing, we can do more control and limit the propagation of the variant. We can more easily and quickly identify a case, isolate that case and help that person avoid mass community spreading, although we already have community spread.”
“The whole idea is to protect our health-care system, because as opposed to March 2020, we don’t have the reserve of human resources. Hospitals are short-staffed across the country. Nurses are burnt out.”
A provincial source told the Star that Trudeau acknowledged the difficulty they all face, and recognized that with people fully vaccinated, “we don’t want to reduce Christmas gatherings for reasons of people’s mental health.”
The prime minister did not spell out to the premiers what the border closures might look like.
Nor was it clear how the federal government can further ramp up border testing and quarantine measures, with at least one province, Quebec, telling Trudeau they do not have the personnel to send to border points of entry to increase testing.
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