No Means No
Is it odd that a citizen of the States like me who is a permanent resident in Quebec would want to keep the Americans out of Canada? Not at all. During this pandemic, keeping out non-essential travelers remains the most logical course of action, despite any drawbacks. At long last, Canada’s neighbor is getting a taste of Trump’s own medicine: Americans are currently banned from entering many other nations until they deal with their uncontrolled outbreaks. Is it fair that all Americans need to pay the costs of the careless American minority? Of course not, but that’s not the point.
Some members of the U.S. Congress representing states along the Canadian border are pushing Canada to open it. But according to polling, the vast majority of Canadians agree that we should keep the Americans out of Canada. A spokesperson for Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland implied that dialogue will remain open but the border will remain closed: “Decisions about Canada’s border are made by Canadians, for Canadians”. Canada will not be bowing down to Mr Trump’s America First and I don’t care about public health agenda.
Other comments on Twitter were equally frank:
“There’s no reason to believe Americans will care about the health of Canadians, given that relatively few seem to care about the health of other Americans.”
“Hard pass on opening the border — we’re a healthy nation with big plans, and you’re a failed society.”
“We need to build a wall… make USA pay for it.”
Overwhelmingly in polls: Keep the Americans Out
In a survey for the Globe and Mail conducted at the end of June by Nanos Research, 81% of Canadians wanted the Canada-US border to stay closed to Americans for the “foreseeable future”. According to Léger (headquartered in Montreal, Léger is the largest Canadian-owned polling and market research firm), 86% of Canadians disagreed with the tentative July 21 reopening of the border. The Léger survey of over 1,500 Canadians and 1,000 Americans at the beginning of July also found that:
- 36% of Americans did not want the Canada-US border to reopen in July
- 88% of Quebecers / Ontarians did not want the Canada-US border to reopen in July
- 95% of Bloc Québécois supporters opposed the reopening (the highest opposition among federal political parties)
- Half of Americans said they wanted the border to reopen in July
Americans prove they can’t be trusted
Thousands of Americans trying to visit Canada for nonessential purposes during the pandemic have been turned away at the border. However, other thousands have entered. Occasionally in the news we hear about Americans being fined $1,000 for breaking quarantine rules after being admitted entry into Canada here on the eastern side of our continent. More precisely, they are charged with failure to comply with an order prohibiting or subjecting to any condition the entry into Canada under section 58 of the Quarantine Act.
Reportedly, those who were fined after crossing into Canada via Ontario failed to drive nonstop to their destination under the conditions directed. Evidently they assumed they’d be forgotten upon entry, not realizing how conspicuous their license plates are to authorities. We have no idea how many fail to comply with quarantine in this manner: we only hear about some who are caught. A $1000 fine is peanuts when we consider that you may incur up to $1000000 in fines and imprisonment of up to 3 years if you transmit the virus to a Canadian and cause risk of imminent death or serious bodily harm.
Normally at Expat in Montreal, we’re pro-migration / pro-travel. But these are obviously not normal times. Nativism is normally an ugly quality, but in 2020 it was a helpful one.
The “Alaska Loophole”
Out west there’s also a whole other breed of Americans: those who are admitted entry into the western provinces of Canada claiming that they are traveling to Alaska. (When driving to Anchorage, Alaska from Seattle, Washington, for example, one typically crosses through British Columbia and the Yukon over the course of a couple days.) Yet many of these Americans have no intention of driving to Alaska.
Western Canadians first had their suspicions raised by the presence of U.S. license plates in tourism hotspots. Such suspicions were then confirmed by complaints from campground owners and other locals who learned that clearly, these Americans were not headed directly to Alaska… or not headed there at all. These circumstances can become unpleasant for everyone involved.
Canada’s Border Services Agency (CBSA) did indeed say that “Healthy, non-symptomatic foreign nationals, traveling through Canada for nondiscretionary purposes, such as to return home to Alaska, may transit through Canada”. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, Americans quickly learned about this “Alaska loophole” and took advantage of it by lying to law enforcement at the border.
Distrust of Americans: Overwrought, or Justified?
A story in the CBC from early July reveals that as the pandemic has swept through Canada, so has an elevated intolerance of Americans. A license plate from one of the 50 states may indeed indicate an irresponsible traveler. Yet some Canadians were living in the States but came back here recently (with U.S. plates still on their vehicle). Canadians being harassed under the suspicion of being an American is certainly unfortunate, but it’s also understandable during an historic public health crisis.
Canadians are generally justified in feeling threatened by the physical presence of folks from the States. Canada’s neighbor has some of the worst known coronavirus hotspots on the planet, aggravated by some of the most mind-numbingly incompetent responses imaginable from a nation that has vast resources. Americans should know better, but willful ignorance and selfishness are powerful forces. Inconvenient though it may be that the innocent in North America pay the price for the guilty and their virus-helping political stunts, that’s the reality of Murica in 2020.
Screenshot. If someday you get nostalgic for that first summer of the pandemic when you weren’t able to travel back and forth between Canada and the States at will, here’s the CBSA website from July 2020:
