Americans with property in Canada growing ‘frustrated’
Canada working with U.S. to create more symmetry with travel rules
There continues to be a “high degree of frustration” among Americans who can’t cross the land border to visit their residences in Canada, while Canadians can fly down to visit their condos in Florida, says the general manager of Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority.
“We are getting more and more a sense of anger and frustration from particularly our American customers who own properties in Canada,” said Ron Rienas during a virtual discussion Tuesday involving a group of cross-border stakeholders.
“They see a high degree of unfairness in the sense that Canadians can go down to their condos in Florida, but they can’t cross the land border to go to their residence in Canada. There’s a high degree of frustration over that, and anger, quite frankly, saying, ‘what really gives?’”
He said those people have indicated they’re willing to do “whatever it takes” to make it happen, “should there be some testing at the border or some type of commitment that they don’t travel, and they do some sort of even quarantine within their summer residences.”
“But certainly, there has to be something done for people that own property on either side of the border, to make it easier.”
Rienas said that could be allowing for “some form of a testing regime” or “vaccine passport” to be put in place
“relatively quickly.”
“We’re also hearing that people are already … cancelling their summer tourism plans because of the uncertainty as to what’s happening at the border,” he said.
“People that would normally be booking a cottage along the lake or up north in the Muskokas, for example, they’re simply not doing it because there’s so much uncertainty related to what could actually happen at the border. I think there needs to be more of a science-based approach to what the risks actually are to reopening the border.”
While the Canada-u.s. land border has been closed to nonessential traffic since March to limit the spread of COVID-19, Canadians have been able to fly to the United States. However, Canada does not allow American travellers from entering by any mode of transport, unless they get a special exemption.
Anthony Annunziata, president of Tourism Niagara Canada, said he doesn’t see a difference between someone arriving in an airplane or someone arriving in a vehicle “in terms of the condition of the individuals when they arrive.”
“Certainly, the only issue then is testing, so whether they’d present a vaccination record, or they present a temperature check, or we get into scenarios like rapid testing, there are scenarios that I can envision that would, at least from a North American perspective, allow travel within North America.”
Late last week, Canadians officials said they’re working with the new Biden administration to close the travel loophole between the two countries.
In his first days as U.S. president, Joe Biden signed an executive order directing the U.S. to collaborate with the Canadian and Mexican governments to develop health and safety measures to reopen the border.