Canada seeks to extend U.S. border restrictions

Canada is not yet prepared to confront the challenges inherent in reopening the shared border with the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday, stopping short of confirming that a ban on non-essential travel will be extended to June 21.

The federal government has asked to extend the current ban, which is currently set to expire May 21, and a favourable response is expected from Washington — but likely won’t come for a few more days.

“Right now, we’re making decisions for right now,” Trudeau said when asked about the possibility of keeping the border closed even after June 21, regardless of the wishes of the U.S., which is dealing with the worst COVID19 outbreak in the world.

“Obviously, there are reflections on what next steps could be and might be in different situations and different progressions of COVID-19, but every step of the way in this unprecedented situation, we’re reacting to and responding to the realities we see now, and that’s where we will stay focused.”

One of those realities is also the starkest: more than a million active cases in the U.S. — 42 per cent of the world’s active caseload — and a death toll that was closing in Wednesday on 83,000 people, growing at a rate of more than 1,000 fatalities a day.

Another is the level of unbridled political urgency, much of it emanating from the White House and Republicanled state capitols, to reopen shuttered businesses and ease restrictions on personal mobility, often in defiance of the Trump administration’s own guidelines.

Not everyone is in a hurry. In New York, home to fully one-quarter of the U.S. COVID-19 cases, Gov. Andrew Cuomo still has his foot firmly on the brake. Reopenings there will be slow, with stringent monitoring of variables like hospital admissions and diagnostic and antibody testing to ensure the virus isn’t flaring back up.

“We must stay alert because we are still learning,” Cuomo warned as he rattled off a list of initial beliefs about COVID-19 that proved false, including that antibodies promised immunity and that children were largely impervious.

“What we thought we knew doesn’t always turn out to be true,” he said. “This virus has been ahead of us every step of the way in this country.”

Businesses, regional officials and other stakeholders in and around border communities are beginning to realize that their traditional model of counting on cross-border traffic may be at an end, said Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.