Canadian people want the border to remain closed

Dear Editor:

There are 13 states that share a border with Canada. They are; Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont and Maine.

Along our border with the United States of America, as of Aug. 6, there had been 984,795 Americans infected with Covid 19 and 55,231 people in those states have died.

Looking at the same day, Canada had a total of 118,561 COVID-19 cases and our total number of deaths is 8,966.

Do those numbers give you some idea why the United States wants to open the border? Americans know that it’s safer for them to go to Canada than remain at home.

Those numbers are just a total for border states. Lurking in the background are another 37 states with a total of over five million COVID-19 cases, rising by over 50,000 cases a day. If those numbers aren’t enough, the death total in the United States is at 162,804 and rising by over 1,000 deaths a day.

If we ever needed a good reason to keep the Canada-U.S. border closed, this is it. The U.S. has 50 times as many COVID-19 cases as Canada and their death rate is 20 times higher than Canada.

In Canada we have followed the science, practised social distancing and the wearing of face masks. In the United States, they ignored the science, opened businesses while the COVID-19 curve was climbing and listened to witch doctors, charlatans and politicians.

It’s easy to identify charlatans: their unstinting, uncompromising refusal to engage in a serious and charitable way with views other than their own. Their lack of respect for intelligent people and experts, their conspiracy mongering and consistent emotionality and their lack of regard for evidence.

Sound like anyone we know?

The last survey I saw showed that over 70% of Canadians want to keep the border closed, but keeping the border closed isn’t our decision. That decision will be made in Ottawa by politicians, so our job is to let those politicians know that we, the taxpaying citizens of Canada, want the border to remain closed until the U.S. has COVID-19 under control to the same extent that Canada has it under control.

Closed to all Americans except essential services, closed to all traffic except essential services. Closed to all planes, trains, vehicles, boats, bicycles and walking traffic, except essential services. In other words, close the border until we the people say it’s safe to open it. This message has to get to the politicians in Ottawa, because knowing politicians; they will open the border when it suits them, not when it suits the taxpayers of Canada.

Vair Clendenning, Kelowna