Canada is loosening its border requirements, which should make crossing easier
Crossing the border into Canada will be easier starting Monday, Feb. 28.
Several Canadian media outlets, including CTV News, reported that the Canadian government is dropping the expensive, pre-arrival PCR molecular requirement for vaccinated travelers at the end of the month. Travelers will still need to take a pre-arrival test, but can instead choose to use the rapid antigen test approved by the country they are coming from to show they don’t have COVID-19.
Travelers into Canada could still be randomly selected to be tested further, but won’t be forced to quarantine while waiting for test results.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, the rapid antigen test will not be accepted if taken at home. It needs to be done by a health care entity or a laboratory. It also needs to be done within 24 hours of arriving at the border. Travelers will also need to continue submitting information through the ArriveCAN app.
With the quicker, less expensive antigen tests, it should be easier for Americans to cross the border into Canada, as well Canadians to get back home after visiting places like Whatcom County.
Traffic volumes have been sluggish throughout 2022 at the Lynden, Sumas and two Blaine border crossings, according to data from Cascadia Gateway Data website. At all four crossings the average is under 5,000 passenger vehicles a day going both north and south, about half as much as in December when non-essential travel restrictions were first lifted by Canada.
Laurie Trautman, director at the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University, said the drop-off in traffic coincided with the reinstatement of the PCR testing requirement as cases of the omicron variant surged on both sides of the border.
Since they didn’t end testing altogether, Trautman said this is a baby step, but she suspects it is the first one toward scrapping testing for vaccinated travelers altogether.
“I anticipate we’ll see a bump with the removal of PCR, like we did back in December, but are still a long ways off from pre-pandemic volumes,” Trautman said in an email.
One other change that Trautman said was a big deal is removing the quarantine requirement for unvaccinated children. That means if an unvaccinated child were to visit Whatcom County, they wouldn’t need to quarantine for 14 days before going back to school.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, cross-border traffic into Whatcom County played a significant role in the local economy. According to a report done by the border research institute, Canadians spent $140 million in this area in 2018, which represented 11.5% of Whatcom’s taxable retail sales.
The report estimates that Blaine received about $24.6 million from Canadian shoppers, which is more than Lynden, Sumas, Birch Bay and Ferndale combined. Bellingham received $107.8 million from Canadian shoppers.
As the pandemic took hold in March 2020 the border was closed to nonessential travelers. The U.S. and Canada began easing some restrictions in November and December 2021.
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 12:01 PM.
