The last of Canada’s COVID-19 border restrictions are set to disappear at the end of this week, but some critics say they fear the measures have already caused a lasting decrease in cross-border travel.
At the recently concluded Global Business Forum in Banff, Alta., prominent voices who have been arguing for months in favour of the lifting of restrictions such as mandatory vaccinations, testing and quarantine requirements for international visitors said they’re now worried the economic impacts of such measures could be permanent.
In a panel discussion at what is an annual conference for business leaders in Canada’s most-visited national park, Meredith Lilly – an associate professor at Carleton University and a former international trade advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper – said cross-border day trips by Canadians to the US never fully recovered after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
She said her research has showed part of that is due to the heightened US border controls put in place after that event.
“Fewer Canadians travelled to the United States to shop or fill up their tank of gas because of the unfriendly border,” Lilly said. “Canada is now doing the same thing to Americans. So, it’s going to take major effort to get Americans to come back.”
This week, the federal government said COVID-19 border measures will not be renewed when it expires on Sept. 30. The change means international travellers will no longer have to prove they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The expiry also spells the end of insisting travellers use the ArriveCan app to input their vaccine status and test results, though the app will live on as an optional tool for customs and immigration.
But Lilly said the two-and-a-half years that pandemic-related border rules were in place was likely long enough to change the habits of some Americans, who, she claims, will now no longer consider visiting Canada in the future.
Statistics Canada reported last week that the number of international arrivals to this country increased in July even as they remain well below pre-pandemic levels.
The agency said the number of trips by US residents in July was 2.2 million, 11 times the number of trips taken in July 2021, but still about 60% of the trips reported in July 2019.
“So, the picture still isn’t great,” Lilly said. “And three years is a long time for people to permanently change their behaviour.”
Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Perrin Beatty, who also spoke in Banff Friday, said this country’s tourism industry has now missed out on two summer seasons.
He said multiple medical experts have argued that testing asymptomatic travellers for COVID-19 at the border is far less effective than testing symptomatic Canadians within their communities.
“We’ve maintained these restrictions simply make no sense. The cost to us, for small businesses in every part of this country, of the friction that we’ve put on at the border has been billions of dollars,” Beatty said.
A report released by the Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable last Friday aimed to assess the impact and effectiveness of border measures and other travel restrictions implemented by the federal government to slow the spread of COVID-19.
The report, which was authored by four Canadian doctors specializing in infectious diseases, emergency medicine and pandemic management, concluded border measures have been largely ineffective at preventing new COVID-19 variants from entering the country.
It also said there is no convincing evidence that pre-departure and on-arrival testing and surveillance have had a significant impact on local transmission in Canadian communities.