It has been quite a week for Canada’s international travellers. Just a few days ago, the conventional wisdom was they weren’t worth worrying about: a statistically insignificant source of COVID-19 infections in Canada, the experts advised; no need to test them, the federal government insisted. Now, thanks to a few obtuse politicians, they might as well be enemies of the state.
The most egregious offences involve Ontario’s ex-finance minister Rod Phillips (St. Bart’s), Saskatchewan’s ex-highways minister Joe Hargrave (Palm Desert, Calif.) and Alberta’s ex-municipal affairs minister Tracy Allard (Hawaii). The more integral an elected official is to the government’s operations, the greater the obligation to follow the rules that government lays out. But at least 10 others have had to apologize or lose lesser appointments.
For the most part, the criticism has been entirely deserved. But there is no reason the average snowbird or any other unelected Canadian ought to suffer as a result. No one is “acting in a way that’s irresponsible” simply by crossing an international border, as intergovernmental affairs minister Dominic LeBlanc intoned on Tuesday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s observation that “the actions of any one person can have a positive or a negative benefit on the health situation of your neighbour” is accurate, but not relevant to international travel per se. The whole thing is approaching the level of moral panic.
Firstly: There are plenty of places Canadians are welcome to travel where the statistical chances of catching COVID-19 are considerably lower than at home. They include St. Bart’s relative to Ontario, and Hawaii relative to Alberta. Both islands have protective measures in place, including requiring travellers to present a negative PCR test no more than 72 hours old — a commonplace rule Trudeau’s government finally adopted with a shrug last week.
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