Cancel Arrivecan

Re: ‘Give me a chance’: The Arrivecan app responds to critics, Letters to the editor, July 16

Dear Arrivecan app, it is wonderful to hear from another government department collecting (useful?) data from citizens and others.

This would put you on a par with the passport office, which collects data from people who hope to get a passport sometime this year, the immigration department, which collects data from people who dream of immigrating in their lifetime (which in the case of Afghans, may be too late), and the health-care system, which collects data on the curable diseases of people who are going to die from those untreated diseases.

One would hope that you, too, are temporary and going to die, along with that other temporary government measure — income tax. Oh. Wait a minute ...

Over the past three months I have made three trips to the U.K. and back. The first cost me a new phone — because the App wouldn’t run on the model I had.

Note that the App failure was then linked to the need to be “randomly” selected for COVID testing — except that there was no process in place to test me.

Now we can submit our customs declaration before landing. That’s wonderful, only maybe first you could sort out the passport reader at immigration which, on my last trip, was unable to read my passport.

Bring on George Orwell and 1984 — is he one of your creators perchance?

Jim Blum, Calgary

If ever our federal bureaucrats wonder why so many Canadians despise Ottawa, look no further than the letter to the editor “from the Arrivecan app” published on July 16. It should be included as prime example of condescension in Websters. Tim Harkema, Calgary