Premier says PM must act on border
Trudeau calls comments ‘unfortunate,’ says Ford playing politics with issue
The border skirmish between Queen’s Park and Ottawa is heating up.
Premier Doug Ford is escalating his call to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for tighter border controls to limit the spread of COVID-19, which has killed more than 8,400 Ontarians since March 2020.
“One thing threatens this summer everyone hopes to have and that’s the weak and porous border measures that the federal government has kept in place,” Ford told reporters Thursday at Queen’s Park.
“The reality is existing border measures have failed to keep the contagious variants out of Canada. The evidence is clear. We know it and they know it. This brutal third wave is fuelled almost entirely by variants that pass too easily through our borders,” he said, announcing an extension of Ontario’s “stay-athome” order till at least June 2.
“We just need the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to fix the problem.”
But Trudeau said “it’s just unfortunate that Doug Ford continues to play politics.”
“They still haven’t said what categories they want to restrict (or) how they want to restrict international arrivals,” the prime minister told CP24.
“We’re there to work with them. We’re there to continue to support Ontarians through this difficult time in whatever ways are necessary,” he said.
After three fruitless requests for action from his cabinet ministers to their federal counterparts, Ford wrote Trudeau directly on Wednesday.
“I want to thank you again for your collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic,” wrote the Progressive Conservative premier, who has worked closely with the Liberal prime minister throughout the 14-month crisis.
“Ontarians, and all Canadians, expect their governments to work together, and that is why I am once again asking for your help to address the issues at our borders,” wrote Ford, adding he was “disappointed” the province’s recommendations have not been heeded.
On April 22, Ford’s government asked for a reduction in “incoming international flights to lessen the mobility of COVID-19 variants and roll out further protective actions at the Canada-U.S. land border.”
Four days later, the Tories asked for pre-departure polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for “all domestic air travellers entering Ontario, consistent with the requirements for international flights.”
Then, on April 29, they demanded the “loophole” at Canada’s international land borders be closed “by implementing a mandatory three-day hotel quarantine in federally designated hotels at the highest traffic crossings” like Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, and Windsor.
“To date, there has been no action on any of these requests and no indication that anything is coming,” complained Ford.
Ford said over the past two weeks, 40 domestic and 24 international flights landed at Pearson International Airport with confirmed cases of COVID-19.
“Unfortunately, because there is currently no testing requirement for domestic travellers, passengers who may have been exposed on the domestic flights are immediately able to move around within Canada.”
The premier added that over that same two-week time frame, “172,000 individuals, excluding essential truck drivers, have crossed Canada’s international border” and many of these travellers entered at the land border to bypass mandatory hotel quarantine.”