A group of mayors and community businesses across the Canadian-U.S. border are calling on the federal government to end the ArriveCAN app, saying it is discouraging Americans from visiting and shopping in Canada.
Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley said the app has been a disaster and no longer needed.
“When you’re riding a dead horse, dismount,” he said. “That’s what the federal government needs to do.”
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati said his community depends on tourism and the 10 million people who used to cross the border each year before the pandemic.
“We usually have a traffic jam,” Diodati told reporters. “This year, with this uncertainty and the confusion and maze of rules at the border with this ArriveCAN app, it will be a disaster on the border if Americans decide to come.”
The ArriveCAN app was introduced during the pandemic to allow travelers to report their travels and vaccination status. Ottawa requires travelers to use the ArriveCAN mobile application or its own desktop version to send your travel and health information related to COVID-19 before arriving in Canada.
Travelers who don’t can cope a 14-day quarantine and even a $ 5,000 fine.
Calls to leave the app come a day after the federal government announced it is easing a number of restrictions introduced during the pandemic. He did not announce that he was removing the ArriveCAN application.
NDP MP Richard Cannings, the British Columbia route from South Okanagan-West Kootenay includes six border crossings, he said trade has dropped by 95 per cent for some of the companies around it.
“We really depend in normal times on this cross-border traffic,” he said.
Cannings said he would like the government to build a system that keeps Canadians safe while allowing businesses to continue.
Cannings said some of its voters find the ArriveCAN app difficult to use.
“My constituents are very worried because a lot of older people don’t have phones, they don’t know what an app is, and yet they have to produce it when they come back to Canada,” he said.
The government “has punished the border communities”: critical
Barbara Barrett is the executive director of the Frontier Duty Free Association, the industry association of Canada’s border tax-free shops. He said border communities are “the hardest hit among the hardest hit.”
“Border communities during the pandemic have been penalized by severe federal measures that have not been applied to either air travel or domestic travel,” he said. “Inexplicably, this federal government has punished border communities with inconsistent and inconsistent border travel rules.”
Barrett said the government’s “shy” announcement on Tuesday showed that Ottawa does not understand the plight of border communities.
“U.S. tourism-dependent border companies are still 50 percent less than in 2019,” he said.
Diodati said the past two years have been devastating for tourism in the Niagara area.
People walk the streets of Niagara Falls tourist areas, Ontario, on Friday, July 16, 2021. (Peter Power / The Canadian Press)
He has asked the government to take the extra money it plans to spend on the ArriveCAN app and hand it over to the municipalities to help them attract tourists.
“What’s happening now is that Americans show up on their minivan with their family at the border without knowing the ArriveCAN app,” Diodati said. “They have no roaming, they can’t download the application, there is a row of cars behind them, they can’t enter the country.
“If you bother your customers, they come back and tell all their friends and a lot of people are ignoring Canada and that will have lasting effects in that country.”
Diodati said he speaks regularly with mayors across the U.S. border
American companies have the advantage now: mayor
“Now they love the situation,” he said. “Canadians can easily and freely go to the U.S. and spend all of our disposable income. And with the latest measure that eliminates vaccine mandates for unvaccinated Canadians to travel to the U.S., again, it gives us a chance to spend. “All of our money in the United States, but it doesn’t belong to us.”
Pauline Quinlan, former mayor of Quebec City of Bromont, said the application is unnecessary and is discouraging tourism in her area.
Bradley said mayors of border communities used to meet regularly with the federal government during the pandemic. Now, he said, they are not being consulted and the government is not responding to their needs.
“It’s like a constrictor boa in our communities that is only squeezing the economy when we should be going in another direction,” he said.
Officials from the Canada Border Services Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada and business groups are scheduled to testify before the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade on Wednesday.