Trudeau government begins work on reopening US-Canada border

Bloomberg

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has begun preliminary internal discussions about reopening the border with
the US, even as Canada remains well behind its neighbor in
vaccinations.
Senior officials have begun to formally talk about options for how to proceed, three people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition they not be identified. One question under consideration is whether to employ a two-track system in which quarantine and testing requirements would be relaxed for vaccinated travellers.
A separate official speaking on condition they not be named disputed there were any new developments or discussions on the border, saying there has been no discernible change in policy.
“We brought forward significant restrictions at our borders over a year ago to limit the spread of Covid-19 in Canada,” James Cudmore, director of communications for Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, said in a statement. “Every month, the federal government consults with public health officials to understand which modifications are required to the existing measures at our borders to keep our communities safe from Covid-19.”
“Minister Blair is in regular contact with his American counterparts about issues relating to our shared border. Until the conditions on both sides of the border change very substantively, the measures at our borders will remain intact,” Cudmore said.
The world’s longest international border has been shuttered since March 2020 to most non-essential travel, dramatically reducing land and air traffic between the two countries. The restrictions have hit the nation’s tourism and airline sectors particularly hard — one estimate says the measures cost those industries about $16.5 billion in revenue last year.
“In the end, it’s a political decision, and at what point does the Canadian side — and it’s the Canadian side at this point that’s the slowpoke — decide that they’re ready to receive and what categories of people that they’ll open up to,” Michael Kergin, a former Canadian ambassador to the US, said.