In an escalating tussle over whether travellers at the US-Canada land border should be required to quarantine in a hotel like international air arrivals, the federal government says provinces are welcome to impose their own measures, but Ottawa will not.

On one side of the dispute, Ontario premier Doug Ford says travellers are taking advantage of a “loophole” to fly into US border airports and crossing into Canada on foot or by car in order to avoid the three-day hotel quarantine mandated for air arrivals in this country.

“Too many people are exploiting these weak measures at our land border to get around the hotel quarantine,” the premier said.

Ford’s comments followed a written request by Ontario health minister Christine Elliott and solicitor general Sylvia Jones asking their federal counterparts, ministers Patty Hajdu and Bill Blair, to close the loophole and ensure there are federally approved quarantine hotels at land border crossings in Niagara Region, Windsor, Sarnia, and Brockville.

“It is important that all travellers in these regions are met with the same quarantine requirement, to ensure that all points of entry are protected,” they wrote.

The letter said there have been reports of international travellers booking flights into nearby American airports, taking a taxi to a United States-Canada land crossing, and walking or driving across the border – a scenario supported by Toronto travel insurance broker Martin Firestone, who said many of his snowbird clients are currently taking advantage of the land-border loophole to avoid staying at the quarantine hotels.

He said limo and shuttle services are available in Buffalo, N.Y., that will transport Canadians to Toronto for approximately $250.

“I’m seeing a tremendous amount that are coming through Buffalo, some walking across the Rainbow and Peace Bridges, if you can believe it, and getting picked up on the other side by shuttles, families, friends,” he said. “US companies are doing huge business now with door-to-door service.”

However, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed Ford’s claims that Canada’s “borders are broken,” maintaining that there are already tight controls on land crossings, including tests before and after arriving in Canada and mandatory two-week quarantines.

“We know importation through the borders is extremely low in terms of cases in in the country,” said Trudeau. “It’s not zero – but at the same time, we have seen that this third wave is very much around community transmission.”

He added that provinces could impose their own measures at land crossings if desired.

Ontario’s call on land crossings followed an earlier request to Ottawa for enhanced measures for interprovincial travellers. Ontario said it had closed its boundaries with Quebec and Manitoba to non-essential travel but there are no measures in place to protect provinces from the spread of COVID-19 variants through interprovincial air travel – an area of federal responsibility.

The province asked for mandatory pre-departure PCR testing for all domestic air travellers entering Ontario, an extension to current rules for international passengers seeking entry into Canada.

Iain Stewart, the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, says there has been some study of whether or not to limit domestic flights as well as international flights. “In the range of things considered, we certainly have thought about that topic,” he said.

Science experts advising Ontario on the pandemic have said it’s important to maintain control over entry into the province as new COVID-19 variants emerge. They have also said, however, that placing more limits on essential workplaces is currently what’s needed to reducing high infection rates.