Canada extends U.S. border restrictions for 30 more days
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed Monday he was keeping his country’s borders to the U.S. closed to nonessential travel for another month.
Just last week, he had decreed that the American-Canadian border would be closed indefinitely until America gets a handle on the coronavirus pandemic.
Trudeau confirmed the new parameters via Twitter.
“Update on our border: We’ve extended the measures in place at the Canada-U.S. border by another 30 days,” he tweeted Monday. “Non-essential travel remains restricted until at least November 21st.”
Update on our border: We’ve extended the measures in place at the Canada-US border by another 30 days. Non-essential travel remains restricted until at least November 21st.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 19, 2020
With coronavirus infection rates spiking in the U.S., Canadian health officials said the decision was based on “the best public health advice available to keep Canadians safe,” as public safety minister Bill Blair said on Twitter.
The initial restrictions, extended several times, had been set to expire on Wednesday. They were first imposed in March. Canadians are also being told not to fly to the U.S., CBC News reported.
Cases are surging in Canada as well, Forbes reported — although, according to statistics from Johns Hopkins University, Canada has had fewer overall cases (about 204,000) than the U.S. has had deaths (about 220,000). There have been 8.2 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S. In Canada, 9,832 people have died from the virus.
President Trump had intimated last month that the borders would be opening “pretty soon” so the two countries could “get back to normal business,” reported CBC News. But Trudeau appeared to say the complete opposite.
“People have to recognize that they’re putting themselves at risk, they’re putting their loved ones at risk,” Trudeau said in a recent podcast interview, according to CBC News. “The recommendation is to avoid nonessential travel, and that’s for people’s own safety.”
The complete lack of lockstep between the two leaders indicated to foreign policy expert Edward Alden that they have not discussed the issue.
“With the Trudeau government saying, ‘No, don’t open’...and President Trump saying, ‘Oh, I think we’ll reopen sometime soon,’ that’s no grounds for a serious government-to-government negotiation,” Alden, a professor of U.S.-Canada economic relations at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., told CBC News.
