The Trudeau government is preparing to “drop” Covid-19 vaccine mandates for travellers entering Canada and make the controversial ArriveCAN app optional by the end of the month.
Apparently sources familiar with cabinet conversations say the changes at set to take place on September 30, according to the Globe and Mail.
If these changes take effect, unvaccinated travellers and people that don’t want to share their private medical data with the government will he able to enter Canada without declaring their vaccine status or be required to quarantine, which has become known as house arrest.
This is not to be confuse with the fact that the Covid-19 vaccine travel mandate order is coming up to it’s expiry and is up for the renewal debate, this wasn’t just a decision the Trudeau government made to be nice. For the renewal of the mandates they need to be able to provide evidence to support the continuation.
If the rumors are true it will be safe to assume by “scrap” they mean suspended. We will have to wait for the official announcement for more clarity.
Mask mandates don’t seem to be going anywhere though as Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos has recently said mask mandate for trains and planes will remain.
While U.S. President Joe Biden declared the pandemic to be over, it is unclear if federal travel mandates will be lifted in the United States.
For months the Trudeau Liberals have faced a flurry of criticism for keeping the vaccine mandates forcing travellers to report their private medical information with the “useless” ArriveCAN app
Melissa Lantsman, a former transportation critic and now deputy leader of the Conservative Party, has been pressing the federal government to remove the application requirement as early as July.
“People do not want to come, and the regulations are certainly redundant,” said Lantsman.
“These kinds of things say Canada is closed for business and when we have that coupled with a transportation network that just isn’t conducive to the potential in this area, we have a recipe for disaster.”
According to the CEO of the Canadian American Business Council, the application and the other demands posed a threat to the “seamless integration” of the US and Canada.
“We’ve got to get to the place where Canadians and Americans are travelling back and forth, seeing family, having fun, but also doing business together,” said CEO Maryscott Greenwood.
“That’s really been a huge hallmark of our relationship, the seamless integration of our economies and of our people. That’s at risk right now.”
The Trudeau government has also come under criticism from US border towns that have been adversely affected by the decline in immigration to Canada.
For several months it has been known that Liberal MPs have criticized their own government for continuing with the Covid-19 mandates. In February Liberal MP for Louis-Hébert Joel Lightbound denounced the governments Covid-19 response as useless.
In July 2022, NDP MP, Brian Mass, called Trudeau’s ArriveCAN app ‘worthless’, he also echoed the concerns of Canadians saying “It’s being used as a back door to permanently track all border crossing.”
On August 1, 2022, BC Rise reported Trudeau’s tracking app, ArriveCAN had started to be investigated by the Privacy Commissioner in August for the way to collected and stored personal private data.
