National Post (National Edition)
Some of `strongest border restrictions' in the world imposed by Canada
Safety minister says claims of leaks are false
OTTAWA • Public Safety Minister Bill Blair refuted claims that the federal government has failed to adequately protect the border amid the pandemic, saying he has imposed some of the “strongest border restrictions” of any country in the world.
His comments came after Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Monday announced a new provincewide lockdown aimed at curbing a spike in new cases and said the province was at “tremendous risk” of contracting new cases of COVID-19 from international and interprovincial travellers. Ford also decried what he described as a lack of testing and tracing by Ottawa at international airports, which he said has led to a higher case count in Ontario.
“We've heard a number of comments which frankly are an unfortunate misrepresentation of what is actually happening at our borders,” Blair said in a press conference Tuesday.
Blair and other Liberal ministers sought to cast doubts on the validity of Ford's claims, as the federal and provincial governments continue to trade jabs over the border issue.
The public safety minister said a range of measures have been in place for months, including contract tracing. Around 100 contact tracing officers make about 4,300 calls every day to monitor new arrivals in Canada, Blair said, while another 3,500 people are contacted through automated calls. He also cited the mandatory use of ArriveCan, an app that calls on incoming travellers to report travel and health updates.
“Let me reiterate that all travellers entering Canada are subject to COVID-19 pre-screening, regardless of their country of origin or their mode of entry,” Blair said.
Officials in the Ford government say those efforts have fallen short, particularly in the absence of rapid testing services at major Canadian airports to screen for new strains of the virus.
Ford earlier this week also claimed that 25 per cent of travellers who arrive in Canada are not monitored, which he blamed for Ontario's rising case count. The roughly 7,800 contact tracing calls cited by Blair seem loosely in line with the number of arrivals in the country, but numbers vary widely depending on the week.
According to data from the Canada Border Services Agency, an average of 9,623 people arrived in Canada by air every day in the week from Dec. 7 to Dec. 13, the most recent period available. Three weeks earlier, 7,553 people arrived.
Over the same period, 189,712 people arrived via the U.S. border, 70,887 of whom were non-essential travellers. The remaining majority were commercial truck drivers.
Observers critical of the premier, as well as some federal officials on Tuesday, pointed out few of the overall infections have been caused by international travel, with most transmission occurring at the community level.
Total new infections in Ontario from travel have been sizable, but much smaller than those caused by community spread, potentially because travel-related infections are confined to single aircraft. As of Dec. 19, a total of 3,831 travel-related COVID-19 cases had been confirmed in Ontario. By comparison, “community spread” has been responsible for 30,167 cases, and “close contact” cases for 65,417, according to government data.
Officials in the Ontario government point out that those travel-related cases still account for 2.4 per cent of infections in the province — higher than the 1.3 per cent cited by Canada's public health agency on Monday. In Toronto, meanwhile, travel has been responsible for 4.7 per cent of new cases, according to publicly available municipal data.
Many travellers coming into Canada have not fully adhered to quarantine rules, Ontario officials said, which has likely also caused cases to rise.
Provincial data shared with the National Post, which used anonymous mobile phone data, found that non-essential U.S. travellers have spent just 77 per cent of their time at home during their two-week quarantine period. Travellers entering Canada are asked to stay at home for the entire twoweek period.
Most of those non-essential U.S. travellers have arrived in Toronto, Brampton and Mississauga, according to the same data, where new cases of COVID-19 have been the highest.
Ford on Monday also expressed concern over a new, highly transmissible strain of the virus emerged in the U.K. this weekend, which prompted Canada to introduce a 72-hour travel ban between the two countries. But without airport testing and deeper genome testing, those efforts could fail to identify the new strain in Canada, one Ontario official said.
Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam on Tuesday said Ottawa is beginning “enhanced sequencing efforts” as a way to track the potential spread of the new virus.