The United States wants it.
Canadian business wants it.
Vaccinated Canadian travellers, too.
Shouldn’t that be enough?
No, somehow, the federal government has opened the land border Monday to go to America but kept in place an impediment that makes the return for many Canadians more costly than it need be.
The reopening of the land border Monday to fully vaccinated travellers is a potential measure of great relief for separated families, discomfited cross-border businesses and tourists looking to dodge the cold rain of late autumn.
But it’s no relief is there is no relief from the required testing to return. The government is needlessly restraining what ought to be an expression of progress in the pandemic. Its rationale has usually been reasonable, but this isn't.
Canada is requiring a negative result for one of a handful of tests to be done within 72 hours of return. The most commonly available is a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. But a nucleic acid test (NAT), nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) or reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) test will also be acceptable.
A cottage industry has surfaced to gouge the Canadian visitor. The tests can range from US$100 to US$250 (a survey found US$137 was the average), even though they cost a small fraction of that to manufacture.
While there is plenty of internet advice on how to get one free in America – because for Americans they are – it means fibbing about your residency and crossing your fingers you won’t be called on it. Hardly what you want to do, yet hardly to blame if you do. Particularly for a family, it would prove to be a hefty surcharge on a trip.
The other option, of course, is to fib on this side of the border and get a PCR test before you leave. Again, though, the resources in the health authority centres are supposed to be used for people feeling sick, not people feeling like taking a day trip or a weekend excursion. So, again, you’d have to feign a sore throat or a cough or some such symptom (although I hear several people say they’re not being asked any longer to justify their presence for a test).
The federal government has said it is “reviewing” this requirement, but surely it has to know that there is little to be gained and much to be lost in this rearward effort.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of Canada, the U.S. government and several states and provinces have lobbied for several weeks to no effect. Canada’s chief health officer, Theresa Tam, acknowledged Friday the policy needed to be re-examined, particularly for short trips, but didn’t change it before Monday’s reopening.
It has become a cliché to note we are going to live for years, maybe forever, with the presence of coronavirus. The challenge is to emphasize the importance of vaccinations, acceptably taper the mobility of those who evade them and intelligently respect the responsible, vast majority who don’t.
In many countries, there is an acceptance that a mixture of vaccination, boosters and regular rapid testing – enforced in many cases by restrictions on access to some public spaces – is adequate in the circumstances.
In Canada, we have reached the point where three-quarters of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, with slightly more on its way.
Unquestionably, there are some flaws in the system. It is relatively easy to falsify the electronic vaccine card if facilities aren’t going to scan them or look at government-issued ID to make sure the QR code is yours. It is irrelevant, of course, if restaurants or other places don’t even ask for them, and anecdotally I hear about these from all sorts of people, vaccinated and not.
And the trust relationship between those who abided the process and those who directed it needs its own booster shot. It doesn’t help to see the provincial health officer at a hockey game without a mask or a political leader muster crowds without them.
Asking vaccinated Canadians to shell out even more for their cross-border trips, or to fib to dodge the expense, further corrodes this tentative trust. It can make the responsible Canadian feel played.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
