Tourism industry’s ‘Northern Ontario Border Working Group’ applauds a government’s move to drop testing requirements at the U.S. Border
Declaring Canada in a “transition phase” in the COVID-19 pandemic, federal officials have announced fully vaccinated travellers entering Canada will not have to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test as of April 1.
Passengers may still be subjected to random PCR testing at the airport, though they will not be required to isolate while awaiting their results.
Unvaccinated and partially-vaccinated travellers will still face testing and quarantine requirements.
All travellers will still have to use the ArriveCAN app to enter their proof of vaccination and other required information.
The Northern Working Group issued the following statement today:
In December 2020, Destination Northern Ontario (DNO), Nature and Outdoor Tourism Ontario (NOTO) and the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario (TIAO), formed the Northern Ontario Border Working Group (NOBWG) to represent the tourism industry to work with the public and private sector to address the issues of a restricted United States (U.S.) border due to the pandemic.
The NOBWG continues to meet and liaise with government officials and tourism stakeholders providing advice, offering solutions and supplying market data to assist in the evolution to an unrestricted U.S. border.
The tourism industry has been hit the hardest by the pandemic and in order for the tourism industry to begin full recovery, unnecessary border restrictions on tourists must end.
As a result of prescriptive measures and vaccination efforts, COVID-19 has waned. On February 15, 2022, the Government of Canada announced that “… it is now time to move to a more sustainable approach to long-term management of COVID-19.” Specifically, they announced that international travellers were no longer required to provide a negative PCR test and could provide the cheaper and more timely antigen test.
As COVID-19 continues to wane and the provinces eliminate most COVID-19 restrictions, the NOBWG has urged the Government of Canada to eliminate all COVID-19 testing requirements at the border.
The announcement today to remove the pre-entry COVID-19 testing will certainly be a boon to the Northern Ontario tourism industry as approximately 1.0 million U.S. visitors spend $466 million in Northern Ontario annually. This will allow all tourism operators and stakeholders to implement their full marketing plan to recapture and recover lost business.
The NOBWG will continue to work with the Canadian Government to develop plans to remove the random testing for travellers arriving into Canada as well as a plan for unvaccinated travellers to return in the near future. These two pieces remain a barrier to a full recovery of the tourism industry.
