Ottawa to require negative test at land borders

Former defence chief accused of relationship with officer he outranked

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says starting next week, anyone arriving in Canada by land will also need to show a recent negative COVID-19 test.

Trudeau says the new measure will kick in Monday, the latest move to keep COVID-19 from spreading within Canada from people who travelled outside it.

That is particularly relevant with multiple, more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus now circling, many of them already within Canada.

The government began requiring all people arriving in Canada by air to show a negative PCR-based COVID-19 test in early January. But more people are coming into the country in a vehicle than on an airplane.

The latest statistics from the Canada Border Services Agency show that since the end of March 2.9 million people, excluding truck drivers, entered through a land crossing, while 2.4 million arrived by airplane.

Trudeau said the federal government cannot prevent Canadians from returning to the country at a land border, even without a test, but if they don’t have the required test they can be fined up to $3,000.

Monday will also mark the start of a new plan for how many doses those vaccinating people against COVID-19 can get out of a single vial from Pfizer-BioNTech.

Dr. Supriya Sharma, the chief medical adviser at Health Canada, says that after a review, the regulatory team agrees with the companies that each vial of their vaccine contains six doses, rather than five. “Based on its assessment, Health Canada has determined that each vial will reliably contain six doses of vaccine plus the sufficient overfill volume when proper technique is used,” Sharma said Tuesday.

The change means Pfizer will fulfil its contract to ship four million doses to Canada by March by sending fewer vials.

Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the military commander overseeing Ottawa’s vaccine distribution program, says next week Canada will get the same number of vials it was expecting, but instead of Pfizer saying those 67,275 vials contained about 336,000 doses, they will count them as 400,000 doses.

OTTAWA—A parliamentary committee has agreed to hold formal hearings into the Liberal government’s handling of allegations of inappropriate conduct by former defence chief Gen. Jonathan Vance, which are already the subject of a military police investigation.

Members of the House of Commons defence committee voted unanimously on Tuesday in favour of an investigation following a Global News report last week that Vance allegedly engaged in a relationship with a woman he outranked.

The Global report also alleged the former chief of the defence staff made a sexual comment to a second, much younger, soldier in 2012, before he was appointed commander of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Vance has not responded to requests for comment. The allegations against him have not been independently verified.

Global says Vance, whose tenure as defence chief included a substantial focus on eliminating sexual misconduct from the ranks, has acknowledged that he dated the first woman nearly 20 years ago, but said the relationship had evolved over the years and was not sexual.

Global also reported that Vance said he had no recollection of making a sexual comment to the other junior member, adding if he had made the comment it would have been intended as a joke and that he was prepared to apologize.

The allegations come only weeks after Vance turned over command of the Canadian Armed Forces following five years in the top job, during which he led the military’s efforts to eliminate sexual misconduct from the ranks.