Close borders completely and refuse travelers to Canada, enough with inaction.

[CITIZEN_2015]

I said this in February 2020. Close the damn borders and refuse entry of travelers, but open border travelling continued and Federal government was as usual slow to act until too damn late. Travelers from China, Iran and Egypt brought in the virus with them and the damn virus spread to entire country and as a result now over a year later we pay heavy human and economic casualty for keeping our borders open, over 25000 died so far and 400 billion annual deficit.

Now we have a new variant from India because again Federal government and Ministry of Transport was too late to act. They were aware of this variant and available data warned them that flights from India have one or two infected travelers but they did not act until yesterday after some 39 infected people with this variant were reported in BC, another one yesterday in Quebec and a new one today in Alberta. Travelers from India brought it over and now Canadians are being infected. 

CLOSE THE DAMN BORDER COMPLETELY. Citizens have been warned against travelling again and again and if they CHOOSE to travel they must be refused entry. I am tired of all those decision makers at all levels of governments making slow or wrong decisions.

[Argus]

I don't think we can legally keep Canadians from entering. Nor do we need to. We CAN force them into real, supervised quarantine in safe facilities for fourteen days while they take repeated tests. We can limit those who are exempt from this. We can force even truck drivers crossing the US border to be tested. 

But we're not.

[CITIZEN_2015]

8 hours ago, Argus said:

I don't think we can legally keep Canadians from entering. Nor do we need to. We CAN force them into real, supervised quarantine in safe facilities for fourteen days while they take repeated tests. We can limit those who are exempt from this. We can force even truck drivers crossing the US border to be tested. 

But we're not.

Anything passes the Parliament can become the law but yes it takes time. But the government can make travelling and return so costly and difficult that a good majority would change their mind but at this time even non-citizens can enter Canada on a visitor's visa and this is totally unacceptable.

Impose a huge tax per head if the citizen returns before pandemic is declared over. The money will be spent to hire security guards to watch over each traveler who re-enters Canada and provide food and accommodation for two weeks in a Federal facility. Anyone who violates the quarantine must go to jail (no fines) for a minimum of 6 months and up to 5 years for endangering Canadian lives.

Edited April 25, 2021 by CITIZEN_2015

[CITIZEN_2015]

Another example of not strict enough restrictions on travellers being abused.

U.S. taxi and limousine services are seeing a boom in business from customers seeking to enter Canada by land to avoid a restriction on international travel that applies only to air traffic.

While both Canadian land and air travellers are required to take a test within three days of departure, and again on arrival, only those flying to Canada must spend up to three days of the country’s 14-day required quarantine period in a hotel.

That has led to a surge of calls for taxi and limousine services from Canadians who fly through U.S. airports in states like New York and then cross over the land border.

[Aristides]

14 hours ago, CITIZEN_2015 said:

Anything passes the Parliament can become the law but yes it takes time. But the government can make travelling and return so costly and difficult that a good majority would change their mind but at this time even non-citizens can enter Canada on a visitor's visa and this is totally unacceptable.

Impose a huge tax per head if the citizen returns before pandemic is declared over. The money will be spent to hire security guards to watch over each traveler who re-enters Canada and provide food and accommodation for two weeks in a Federal facility. Anyone who violates the quarantine must go to jail (no fines) for a minimum of 6 months and up to 5 years for endangering Canadian lives.

Citizens cannot be denied entry to their own country. That said, enforcement of quarantines has been anemic. 

Because they have access to the US, it wouldn't surprise me if most truck drivers have been vaccinated by now.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Aristides

[CITIZEN_2015]

14 minutes ago, Aristides said:

Citizens cannot be denied entry to their own country. That said, enforcement of quarantines has been anemic. 

They can be barred from departing and for those already out they should be made to pay heavy taxes to cover their cost of very strict quarantine strictly enforced by trained security guards for two weeks,  travellers must be escorted from airports or border crossings to Federal facilities and kept there for two weeks by guards and the cost recovered by heavy entry tax on each traveller.

Look there are over 25000 Canadians dead and hundreds of thousands likely permanently harmed by covid because of relaxed border crossings and travelling. As I mentioned first cases of covid were brought in by travellers from China, Iran and Egypt  and spread all  over the country. I had asked for borders to be closed on this forum in February 2020 before this happened. Federal government was too slow to act and too anemic to enforce.

Edited April 25, 2021 by CITIZEN_2015

[Aristides]

23 minutes ago, CITIZEN_2015 said:

They can be barred from departing and for those already out they should be made to pay heavy taxes to cover their cost of very strict quarantine strictly enforced by trained security guards for two weeks,  travellers must be escorted from airports or border crossings to Federal facilities and kept there for two weeks by guards and the cost recovered by heavy entry tax on each traveller.

Look there are over 25000 Canadians dead and hundreds of thousands likely permanently harmed by covid because of relaxed border crossings and travelling. As I mentioned first cases of covid were brought in by travellers from China, Iran and Egypt  and spread all  over the country. I had asked for borders to be closed on this forum in February 2020 before this happened. Federal government was too slow to act and too anemic to enforce.

You can try and make the means difficult but I don't think they can be barred from departing.

[CITIZEN_2015]

12 minutes ago, Aristides said:

You can try and make the means difficult but I don't think they can be barred from departing.

Why not? Governments assume extraordinary powers in extraordinary situations (like war time measures) however, I don't think this Liberal government has the spines to impose these kind of measures.

[cougar]

22 hours ago, Argus said:

I don't think we can legally keep Canadians from entering. Nor do we need to. We CAN force them into real, supervised quarantine in safe facilities for fourteen days while they take repeated tests. We can limit those who are exempt from this. We can force even truck drivers crossing the US border to be tested. 

But we're not.

You will have to quarantine everyone on the plane including the pilot and the luggage handlers.  This means a pilot flies one international flight every every 15th day and in the other time is self isolating away from home.

As long as India and Pakistan are concerned I support a permanent indefinite closure.  No more immigration from those places; we have diluted our population with them enough already.

[Argus]

1 hour ago, cougar said:

You will have to quarantine everyone on the plane including the pilot and the luggage handlers.  This means a pilot flies one international flight every every 15th day and in the other time is self isolating away from home.

As long as India and Pakistan are concerned I support a permanent indefinite closure.  No more immigration from those places; we have diluted our population with them enough already.

The airline staff can presumably be trusted to be professional - and we have to make allowances for reality. I'd still test them, though. Generally they just turn around and fly out with another group of people once the plane is serviced, though. We could put all such people who stay overnight in an airport hotel reserved for that purpose.

[cougar]

9 hours ago, Argus said:

The airline staff can presumably be trusted to be professional

???  Yes, they will be professional with the flight attendants serving dinner and picking up the garbage from those crammed passengers on a transcontinental flight lasting 12+ hours; then quickly popping in the cockpit for a chat with the pilot.

Lets not fool ourselves!

[Army Guy]

On 4/25/2021 at 1:28 PM, Aristides said:

Citizens cannot be denied entry to their own country. That said, enforcement of quarantines has been anemic. 

Because they have access to the US, it wouldn't surprise me if most truck drivers have been vaccinated by now.

Citizens can be denied anything and everything.  All your current basic rights or rights guaranteed by our constitution, or by law can be changed canceled , or removed if the government decides to.  there are many examples in our history. Our freedom of movement has already been suspended, complete lock downs another example. 

another example War measures act gives the government almost god like powers, enough to suspend all of your current rights, no questions asked, see FLQ crises 

Edited April 26, 2021 by Army Guy

[CITIZEN_2015]

On 4/25/2021 at 1:33 PM, cougar said:

 

Deleted.

Edited April 26, 2021 by CITIZEN_2015

[CITIZEN_2015]

Border control becomes much more important after Canada achieves full herd immunity in the fall. I am warning the Federal Government now to takes immediate measures to close borders to travellers from third world countries which for various reasons (say uncontrolled population or lack of proper health care like India, Pakistan, China, Middle East, Africa) will not be able to vaccinate their people in time and have created new variants for which our vaccines are less effective or worse not effective. 

Call me whatever you wish (nationalist, concerned citizen, uncaring , selfish. whatever). I do care about third world people so we need to share with them our vaccines as much as we can after we achieve herd immunity but well being of myself and Canadians comes first. If they allow over a billion population then we don't have to pay the price for it.

Edited April 26, 2021 by CITIZEN_2015

[GrittyLeftist]

This crisis has amply demonstrated that the wrong people are in charge of society.  After SARS, a plan was put in place in case of a novel coronavirus but it was not followed.  Canada has cared more about the bottom line of the wealthy than the right of citizens to not die of the plague right from day one.

For me, the right play would have been to invoke the Emergency Measures Act a year ago at the latest.  Then we could have temporarily suspended Charter rights such as the right to travel, the right to free assembly, and the right of newspapers to print covid denialism.  Could have saved a lot of lives... but it would have cost the megarich some money.  Can't have that.  Besides, what's the point in being an oligarch if you can't flit around the world on your private jet, spreading plague everywhere you go?

[Army Guy]

59 minutes ago, GrittyLeftist said:

This crisis has amply demonstrated that the wrong people are in charge of society.  After SARS, a plan was put in place in case of a novel coronavirus but it was not followed.  Canada has cared more about the bottom line of the wealthy than the right of citizens to not die of the plague right from day one.

For me, the right play would have been to invoke the Emergency Measures Act a year ago at the latest.  Then we could have temporarily suspended Charter rights such as the right to travel, the right to free assembly, and the right of newspapers to print covid denialism.  Could have saved a lot of lives... but it would have cost the megarich some money.  Can't have that.  Besides, what's the point in being an oligarch if you can't flit around the world on your private jet, spreading plague everywhere you go?

I agree with you the wrong people are in charge... But declaring the war measures act might not have been the right choice either. It would give Justin and his merry band of lairs total control of the country, with the other parties just taking up seats and watching.....besides they don't need an act to take away your civil or constitutional rights. had the government acted faster, locked down the entire country, nobody in or out, no traveling at all .  used the media to instruct the public on safe practices, used some of those bils to fix what was broken, long term care homes, not enough staff, lack of PPE, lack of medical drugs and machines manufacturing in Canada. the list goes on... 

[CITIZEN_2015]

5 hours ago, GrittyLeftist said:

This crisis has amply demonstrated that the wrong people are in charge of society.  After SARS, a plan was put in place in case of a novel coronavirus but it was not followed.  Canada has cared more about the bottom line of the wealthy than the right of citizens to not die of the plague right from day one.

For me, the right play would have been to invoke the Emergency Measures Act a year ago at the latest.  Then we could have temporarily suspended Charter rights such as the right to travel, the right to free assembly, and the right of newspapers to print covid denialism.  Could have saved a lot of lives... but it would have cost the megarich some money.  Can't have that.  Besides, what's the point in being an oligarch if you can't flit around the world on your private jet, spreading plague everywhere you go?

We didn't have to go that far. If we had just completely closed the borders in the spring of 2020 then the virus would not have entered Canada at the first place. It is the right of return to Canada should have been suspected for travellers after a certain date like February 2020 not the right of travelling. No need for emergency measures when there wouldn't have been an emergency if borders were closed in time.

Edited April 30, 2021 by CITIZEN_2015

[CITIZEN_2015]

Premier Ford asked Trudeau for tougher border measurements:

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canada-ontario-travel-border-restrictions-justin-trudeau-doug-ford-175740176.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAERJEvEVvYFbChAn4haxQfN8ANq8v_k3HTby02Q0seTeLOUI5_zaVffId02pQkJLXR7gi92D7VbNWNqAHEU6G0Fhu91KZ9vS7W7f_3kBCNek4APt9UMnhYZR5hWDIqyOSGIpcXOaY5fqL19xwYkn-40JiczDLXHdegzhepHY9YF3

 

If Federal government fails Canadians again to close the borders completely then new vaccine resistant covid virus will enter Canada and we will have another deadly wave and much more death. Border closures and tough enforcement is a Federal jurisdiction so ACT NOW.

Edited April 30, 2021 by CITIZEN_2015

[OftenWrong]

22 hours ago, CITIZEN_2015 said:

If Federal government fails Canadians again to close the borders completely then new vaccine resistant covid virus will enter Canada and we will have an

Exactly. Get ready for the Canadian variant. The longer we hide and avoid herd immunity, the more likely it is.

[CITIZEN_2015]

6 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

Exactly. Get ready for the Canadian variant. The longer we hide and avoid herd immunity, the more likely it is.

Canada will achieve herd immunity in two months but third world is likely months or even years away so most likely vaccine resistant variants will emerge in those regions and it is very important in order to save many Canadians lives and total economic collapse that Canada closes it borders completely. At the very least make both vaccine certification and before flight test negativity and two weeks in a Federal facility as mandatory conditions for entering Canada.

Edited May 2, 2021 by CITIZEN_2015