The Canadian Border Services Agency in Sault Ste. Marie is seeing a substantial increase in traffic volumes at the international border crossing since Canada relaxed its re-entry requirements for short trips into the United States earlier this week.
But the change, which came into effect Nov. 30, has also come with some increased headaches for both border officials and travellers.
Patrick DesChene, acting chief of operations for Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) in Sault Ste. Marie, says border officials in the Sault have subjected roughly half of all fully-vaccinated travellers to the 14-day quarantine period for not providing their travel and vaccination information via the ArriveCAN website or smartphone app.
“Right now it’s about 50-50, and that’s definitely causing some grief for a number of travellers,” he told SooToday Thursday.
Travellers returning to Canada without their information uploaded to the ArriveCAN website or app will be placed in quarantine and given a home test kit.
“If they’re fully vaccinated and the test kit turns out to be negative, Health Canada may lift the quarantine period,” DesChene said.
CBSA advises the public that while trips into the United States 72 hours or less do not require a negative PCR test, trips longer than 72 hours still require both the negative molecular test and travel information uploaded on ArriveCAN.
Travellers not meeting all requirements can also be subject to Health Canada fines that can exceed $6,000 with surcharges included.
DesChenes said border officials in the Sault haven’t been levying those fines to travellers for not having their information available via ArriveCAN.
But they have been placing travellers returning to Sault Ste. Marie in quarantine.
“Officers would prefer not to inform travellers that they have to go into quarantine, and it just causes for not an ideal interaction with clients - and mostly local citizens,” said DesChene. “So, we just want the public to know the officers here are just doing their job, and there has to be some onus when you’re crossing an international border, given the last 20 months of a pandemic, to do due diligence to ensure you’re meeting all the requirements to re-enter the country.”
Information on how to use ArriveCAN can be found on the Government of Canada website.