National Post (National Edition)
Public health officials still take Canadians for idiots
The federal government solved a political problem on Friday, and as it has so many times over the 20 months, it gratuitously insulted Canadians' collective and individual intelligence in the solving. The only saving grace this time around is that it will make some Canadians' lives easier, rather than more difficult: As of Nov. 30, just in time for cross-border families and friends to miss out on another American Thanksgiving, those of us wishing to visit the United States for less than 72 hours can return home without proof of a negative test.
The problem was a large and growing constituency calling for a more open border with the United States: border-jurisdiction politicians and chambers of commerce, the tourism industry, families cut off from each other for the better part of two years. A de-facto surcharge of roughly $150 for a PCR test on return to Canada was a serious impediment to travel, as nicely illustrated by a recent Toronto Maple Leafs game in Buffalo, N.Y.: In normal times, the 11,000 or so seats left empty by forlorn Sabres fans would have been full of day-tripping Canadians festooned in blue and white.
But there is another large constituency, of course, that looks askance at any lessening of restrictions. That constituency spends most of its time screaming at conservative premiers and their health ministers and much less time screaming at the feds, but federal border issues in particular can blow up at a moment's notice — sometimes for no reason (hello, Rod Phillips) and sometimes simply because the two country's epidemiological situations remain very different. Among Canadian border jurisdictions, the Yukon currently has the highest rolling daily rate of new reported infections, at 34 per 100,000, followed by Alberta (15) and Manitoba (12). The average among American border states combined is 49, and is as high as 84 in Michigan.
How to balance these two constituencies' concerns? The feds could have expanded the suite of acceptable tests to include rapid antigen tests — which the Americans accept as proof of COVID-negative status for air travel. (Fully vaccinated foreigners don't need a negative test to enter the U.S. overland, or on a ferry.) These cost between $40 and $60 in Canadian cities, with results in just a few minutes. They're not as accurate as PCR tests, as Canadians have heard a million times from our scandalously rapidtest-averse public health community, but they're still very good — particularly at flagging people who are the most infectious.
Instead the feds blew straight past that: You will require no COVID test at all if you return to Canada from a short trip to the U.S., so long as you're fully vaccinated and beetle back before 73 hours have elapsed.
Oh, and so long as you're a Canadian citizen, permanent resident or status Indian.
Lesser humans, including international students, temporary workers and foreign tourists, still have to produce a full-on PCR test to enter Canada. That test could have been conducted before they left Canada, so long as the result isn't more than 72 hours old, which is not as stupid as it might seem: If you catch COVID during 72 hours abroad, you're very unlikely to test positive before hour 73. But it also highlights how irrelevant crossing a border is to all this: You either have the virus or you don't.
That being the case, at Friday afternoon's press conference in Ottawa, Global News reporter David Akin asked newly minted Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos for some medical justification for treating fully vaccinated Canadians coming back from brief American excursions differently than fully vaccinated Americans coming to visit. Duclos essentially repeated the day's announcement and punted to Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam to provide “evidence based on health and science.”
Such evidence was not forthcoming. “So, I think, um, some of it is not as much the science as it is the operational consideration, as I understand it,” she ventured.
In other words: “This is pure politics, don't look at me.”
Alas, she then tried to bail Duclos out. “If an American traveller comes into Canada, I believe they have a right to stay for six months,” she said, not sounding or appearing super-confident about what point she was trying to make. “And there is no way that we can actually follow them up in terms of the return or the length of the trip.”
If she means that Canada is incapable of determining whether an American has left the country and returned within 72 hours, then something has gone quite wrong with the border information-sharing agreement between our two countries. But at this point Tam's deputy, Dr. Howard Njoo, interjected to explain that Akin was quite right: This is all quite certainly about epidemiology, and not about nationality.
Huh? Canada isn't the only country with nonsensical rules like these. It would all be so much low-grade farce if the stakes weren't so high. Friday's other big announcement was Health Canada's approval of the Pfizer vaccine for Canadian children aged five to 11. Tam, Njoo and Duclos, their provincial and municipal counterparts, and the entire public health apparatus of this country will spend the next weeks and months extolling the scientifically proven virtues of this miracle juice to a significant population of hesitant Canadian parents: Last month, the Angus Reid Institute found 23 per cent of parents were a firm “no” on vaccinating their under-12 kids; 18 per cent intended to wait; and nine per cent weren't sure.
The vaccine promotion effort would be on considerably firmer ground, surely, if its leading lights hadn't spent the last 20 months playing the entire country for fools — dressing up “operational considerations,” as Tam called politics, as science and expecting us not to notice.