New Rules For Land Crossings Into Canada Start Today; Ottawa May Test Essential Workers

February 15, 2021 Jim Byers

New testing rules for travellers driving into Canada begin today, and the Trudeau government may expand the tests to include essential workers.

Beginning today (Feb. 15), all non-essential travellers who are granted exemptions and allowed into Canada by customs officials will have to show a negative result from a test for COVID-19. Those tests must be what’s called PCR tests and must have been taken with 72 hours of someone arriving at the border.

All travellers granted exemptions from the current laws, which generally allow only essential workers into the country from the U.S., have to quarantine at home for 14 days after they arrive in Canada.

At this stage, essential workers such as truck drivers do not have to show a negative COVID-19 test at the border. But Canadian Public Safety Minister Bill Blair says the Trudeau government is considering a testing requirement for essential workers, too.

“We’re working very closely with the Public Health Agency of Canada and also with our provincial health authorities to [look] at implementing a system of regular testing to help protect those essential workers and truck drivers that are coming into the country and also to ensure that they’re not the source of any new infection,” Blair said in an interview on the CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live show on Suday.

“That’s separate and apart from the measures that we’re implementing with respect to non-essential travel.”

Starting Feb. 22, travellers entering Canada at the land border will also be required to take a COVID-19 molecular test on arrival as well as toward the end of their 14-day quarantine.

Five land ports of entry will have onsite testing as of Feb.22. They are: