Quebec business leaders operating in the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries, including organizers of a high-profile pee-wee hockey tournament, are the latest to line up against federal rules requiring pre-departure PCR testing for fully vaccinated travellers to Canada.

Together with the Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable, executives from the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament, Clarion Pointe Aéroport Québec, and Croisières AML yesterday called for the federal government to remove the mandatory testing requirement for travellers coming into Quebec, regardless of how long they have been outside of Canada.

The rules, they say, present a “major obstacle,” to the province’s ability to showcase itself to international visitors, who have for decades flocked to Quebec during the winter to experience events such as the Carnaval de Quebec, the Hôtel de Glace, and the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament.

The Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament alone attracts teams from all over the world, but this year is experiencing another round of international teams withdrawing from competition – a situation that is “not only tragic for the youth who are missing an opportunity to compete, but for our local Quebec City economy,” said tournament director Patrick Dom. “The consequences are real: hotels and restaurants have seen a significant decrease in patrons and other travel-related expenses from these events have diminished.

Dom says the cancellations are a direct result of “the overly restrictive policies in Canada that do not align with the government’s own expert recommendations. It has resulted in a major loss for Québec City and the entire province.”

The Roundtable notes that international visitors have significant positive knock-on effects for the broader Quebec economy and that without international visitors, the survival of local events and businesses is being threatened.

Quebec’s tourism industry, it says, supports 402,000 jobs and more than 30,000 businesses, two-thirds of which are located outside the Quebec City and Montreal region.

Echoing a message shared with similar civic coalitions across the country, the Roundtable maintains that a pre-departure PCR test for arrivals into Canada runs counter to the recommendations made by the Canadian federal government’s COVID-19 Testing and Screening Expert Advisory Panel earlier this year, which concluded that fully vaccinated travellers should not require a pre-departure test for a trip of any duration.

It adds that the recent changes by the federal government removing the PCR test requirement for those that have been outside of Canada for less than 72 hours “does nothing to help Quebec businesses. In fact, these changes opened a one-way door allowing Canadians to leave the country, while disincentivizing international visitors from coming here.”

The Roundtable believes that travel measures should be based on a traveller’s vaccination status and should be consistent with the recommendation of the government’s Expert Panel, adding that the government’s mandatory pre-departure PCR test to enter the country leads international travellers to do business elsewhere and hurts international tourism and local economies in Canada.

Jean-François Côté of Clarion Pointe Aéroport Québec and chairman of Destination Quebec City, says: “Quebec’s hospitality sector is heavily dependent on international travel. At a time when this sector has already been hit hard, the federal government should be doing everything it can to promote Quebec to the world. Instead, we have rules discouraging people from coming here. The message from our businesses is clear: time is running out. We need the federal government to remove the pre-departure PCR test for fully vaccinated travellers now.”

The Canadian Tourism Roundtable is a cross-Canadian coalition of leaders in the tourism and travel sector – including representatives from airports, airlines, hotels, and chambers of commerce across the country.