Premier Doug Ford is upping his efforts to blame the relative trickle of travel over the border for the ongoing spread of COVID-19 in the province as he seeks to rally public opinion on the need for tighter border restrictions.
And a Facebook ad sponsored by one of Ford’s cabinet ministers is calling on the public to sign a petition demanding an end to non-essential travel into Canada — even though such travel has been largely banned for over a year, and recent cases known to be linked explicitly to travel comprise less than two per cent of known infections.
“The federal government must ban all non-essential travel to Canada, so we do not needlessly prolong the third wave, or create the conditions for a fourth one,” reads the Facebook ad placed by Education Minister Stephen Lecce.
The social media appeal to fears about a potential fourth wave driven by travellers comes after the Star reported earlier this week that Ford’s Progressive Conservative party has also purchased significant TV and radio time for a blitz questioning the federal Liberals’ pandemic response.
The federal Liberals have said they are willing to work with Ontario to help curb the importation of new COVID-19 cases, but with the vast majority of incoming travel already deemed essential, there is a question of what more could actually be done to cut the flow of people.
Privately, sources in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office offered up the equivalent of a political eye roll Tuesday when asked about Ford’s latest salvo, noting that it’s within the premier’s power to further shutter known hot-spots of contagion and non-essential workplaces.
Trudeau said Tuesday that the federal government is responding to new issues at the border as they pop up, and tracking where new cases are coming from.
“For example, the system clearly showed that in the case of flights from India and Pakistan, there was a higher level of importation of people testing positive on the on arrival test,” he told a news conference in Ottawa.
“And that’s why based on that data, we were able to shift our posture and suspend those direct flights.”
Non-essential travel into Canada has been banned since March 2020, although the list of essential travellers has expanded to include certain family members of permanent resident or citizens and some categories of students.
Late last week, Ford and Trudeau quibbled over whether international students could be among those whose entry into Canada is further restricted, with Trudeau suggesting Ford had asked for a ban, a claim Ford later denied.
The vast majority of incoming travellers into Canada — some 73 per cent according to the Canada Border Services Agency since March of 2020 — have a right of entry, meaning they are citizens or permanent residents. The remainder were granted exemptions under the current border restrictions.
The number of COVID-19 cases linked directly to travel as part of the overall infection rate in Canada is small. More than 5,000 arriving air travellers have been found to be infected since mandatory quarantining in hotels began in late February. By comparison, more than 342,000 new cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in Canada in the same time period.
But in a statement released Tuesday, Ford’s office said 35 international flights and 23 domestic flights from outside Ontario landed at Pearson airport with COVID-19-positive passengers in the past two weeks.
“These cases and countless others could have been avoided had action been taken sooner,” the statement said.
“We are once again pleading with the federal government to impose stricter measures at our borders, including banning all non-essential travel, implementing pre-departure PCR testing for domestic flights and closing the quarantine loophole at land border crossings.”
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Those arriving into Canada by land aren’t subject to the same mandatory hotel quarantine as air travellers, but are asked to self-isolate.
However, CBSA statistics show 87 per cent of them are exempt from that requirement because they are essential workers.