Ottawa is cracking down on Canadians’ ability to travel abroad, bringing in new restrictions after weeks of calls from premiers and experts for the federal government to get tougher in controlling the spread of COVID-19 variants.
Some of the new measures announced Friday are to take effect in the coming weeks. They include mandatory testing at airports of arriving international travellers, who will have to quarantine in a hotel at their expense until they get their test results.
Canada’s major airlines also agreed, at the federal government’s request, to suspend all flights to Mexico and the Caribbean as of Sunday, until April 30.
Given that some of Ottawa’s new measures won’t take effect for a few weeks, the Ontario government said Friday it would move ahead with its plan to test all arriving international passengers at Pearson airport starting Monday at noon. Travellers who refuse will be issued $750 tickets.
The question now is: Are the new measures enough to combat the more contagious COVID-19 variants that have already begun to wreak havoc in Canada, including in longterm-care homes, and could lead to what some health professionals describe as a “whole new pandemic”?
Experts said Ottawa’s new restrictions will help, but that it now falls to the provinces to do more to limit the spread of variants that are already here, by implementing interprovincial travel restrictions and paid sick leave for workers.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday that arriving international passengers will soon have to undergo a mandatory COVID-19 test at their expense, followed by quarantine in a governmentapproved hotel for up to three days while awaiting their test results. He said it could cost travellers up to $2,000.
Should the test come back negative, the individual will be allowed to spend the rest of their 14-day quarantine at home, with the government promising “increased surveillance and enforcement.” If the test is positive, the individual will have to continue their quarantine in a government facility.
Previously, all travellers were mandated to quarantine at home for 14 days, though were not routinely tested upon arrival. The government introduced another measure earlier this month requiring individuals to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within three days of departing for Canada.
The new travel measures announced Friday will also apply, for now, to those who have been vaccinated, said chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam.
“There’s still some unanswered questions about the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing transmission and the duration of protection, but we expect those kinds of questions to get answered in the coming months,” she said.
Tam said that all travellers, regardless of their initial test result, will also undergo another test at day 10 of their quarantine. Public health officials have said it can take up to14 days for a person to develop COVID-19 after being exposed to the virus.
It’s unclear when this new system of mandatory testing and quarantine will happen at the four major airports in Vancouver,
Calgary, Toronto and Montreal that will still be allowed to process international arrivals. Trudeau said it would be implemented “as soon as possible in the coming weeks.”
Premier Doug Ford called Ontario’s plan to test international passengers at Pearson in the meantime a “stopgap” measure. Those travellers will be able to continue quarantining at home until the new federal rules take effect.
“This is one hole that we can try to plug,” Ford said at Queen’s Park. “If these new strains take hold the consequences will be dire.”
The measures announced by Ottawa are significant, but their success will depend on how quickly they’re implemented, said the co-founder of Covid Strategic Choices, a group of experts who study the optimal strategy to manage COVID-19 in Canada and that launched a petition signed by health experts calling on Ottawa to implement tougher travel measures.
“The key issue now is time. If they put in place all the elements they announced today quickly and effectively, Canadians will be much safer,” said Robert Greenhill, a former deputy minister and president of the Canadian International Development Agency.
“The issue is how much time they take. If they take three to four weeks to implement testing and quarantine, then there’s a huge danger that the variants of concern will already take hold in Canada and we will be facing a massive third wave and third lockdown because of these variants.”
Greenhill said the government must also take action on the land border with the United States, which remains closed to non-essential travel.
The new Biden administration is working on bringing in other measures. Ottawa said Friday it will require travellers entering via the border to show proof of a negative test taken within three days, though some individuals, such as commercial truckers, will be exempt.
The petition launched by Greenhill’s group, and signed by Canadian virologists, epidemiologists, doctors and public health officials, said all individuals crossing the border, including essential workers like truck drivers, should be tested.
While flights to the Caribbean and Mexico are now out of the question, it’s still possible to fly to sunny U.S. destinations such as Florida.
“We need to make sure that those places are also not being used as the next holiday destination,” Greenhill said.
Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said “we looked at the destinations where most Canadians spend their vacation,” while calling on Canadians travelling elsewhere to cancel their flights.
He also said the airlines’ decision to suspend the flights was “voluntary” as the government continues to discuss with them support for the industry.
Provinces have so far reported 85 cases of a variant first identified in the United Kingdom, and nine cases of a variant found in South Africa, Tam said Friday.
Ontario detected its first case of the B.1.1.7 variant on Boxing Day and has since found 51 with dozens more “variants of concern” awaiting final identification.
Public health officials expect the variant, which has been blamed for a massive and deadly outbreak at Roberta Place nursing home in Barrie, to become the dominant strain in Ontario in March.