Why the delay at the border?

The federal government is clamping down. If you jet off on “non-essential” travel, when you arrive back at a Canadian airport you’ll face a mandatory COVID test and be forced to quarantine in a designated hotel for at least three days — at a cost of $2,000.

But not quite yet. That’ll all take effect “as soon as possible,” for sure in February, says the new transport minister, Omar Alghabra. Might come sooner, maybe even this week, he adds. Not sure.

Apparently the government decreed this new system without having a clear idea of just when it will start. In the meantime, Canadians are streaming back from warmer climes. They’re jamming airports in Mexico and the Caribbean where vacation flights are being cancelled until April 30. And they’re scrambling to get in under the wire before that expensive three-night hotel quarantine kicks in.

Maybe that’s the real plan. Maybe what looks like disorganization is actually a cunning scheme to scare travellers back home before they have to get caught up in the tougher new quarantine system that will be costly for them and no doubt awkward for the government to administer.

Perhaps. But the effect right now is that travellers are rushing back before the new testing and quarantining regime comes into force. Ontario started its own mandatory tests at Pearson Airport on Monday, but elsewhere that isn’t the case. Hundreds, maybe thousands, are returning without the rigorous screening that the government now insists is vital to stop new variants of COVID-19 from getting into the country.

If those new rules are truly necessary, they should be enforced right away. Of course they’re an inconvenience to travellers, but that was inevitable. Letting enforcement slide for some indeterminate period of time undermines the very point of bringing in tighter restrictions.

In fact, those restrictions are far from as tight as they could be. They’re modelled in part on the quarantine system Australia has used to keep COVID there at near zero levels. But the Canadian rules could be described as, at most, Aussielite.

Anyone flying into Sydney or Melbourne has for months been forced to quarantine in a designated hotel not for three nights but for two full weeks, under armed guard and at their own expense. Even if they test negative for COVID after a few days they must serve out the full 14-day confinement period.

Even more striking, many Australians have been trapped abroad for weeks or even months because spaces in quarantine hotels are limited and the government allows only a limited number of its citizens to return each week. Amnesty International complains that’s a denial of basic rights, but Australians overwhelmingly support the system. Would Canadians back such a strict regime, even now? We’re not so sure.

It’s also far from clear why Ottawa pressured the airlines to suspend flights just to the Caribbean and Mexico. Why not to South Africa, Britain and Brazil, where the virulent new strains of COVID originate? Why not Florida and Arizona, where many Canadians spend the winter?

Most importantly, why make so much noise about air travel while remaining mostly silent on a potentially much bigger threat: the constant back-and-forth movement of people and commerce across the Canada-U.S. border?

Obviously that’s much more important to the economy and can’t be just shut off like vacations in the sun. But some 200,000 to 300,000 truckers and tens of thousands of essential workers are crossing the border, and screening for COVID is lax at best.

A group of 100 scientists and health workers are calling for much stricter testing, and possibly accelerated vaccination, for all those less-visible cross-border travellers as part of what they call a “Canadian Shield” approach to better virus security. And the new Biden administration says it wants tougher border rules as well.

The Trudeau government was right to crack down (sort of) on non-essential air travel, even if it acted far too slowly. It should now turn its attention to tightening up surveillance at the land border.

If these new rules are truly necessary, they should be enforced right away