Although Canada reopened its gates for tourism in August 2021, its requirements for entry were initially pretty stringent, with both vaccine and quarantine requirements on top of testing for Covid before travel to or within the country.
As the pandemic waned, so did some of the rules to travel to The Great White North. In April of this year, they relaxed many of the requirements. However 3 big things continued:
- You had to be fully vaccinated to enter Canada (unvaccinated people could only enter under very specific circumstances)
- All travelers were required to use the ArriveCAN app to upload travel and vaccination information
- Travelers in Canada could be subject to random Covid testing
However media throughout Canada and the U.S. is reporting that all three of those have a good chance of being repealed, effective September 30th.
As per Reuters, an unnamed government source said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was likely to drop the vaccine requirement, along with the random COVID-19 testing. The source, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record, also said the ArriveCAN app would become optional, instead of being a required part of the entry process into Canada.
As of this writing, there’s been no direct comment about this from Canada’s Health Ministry. However the Canadian government said in late June that the existing border restrictions would remain in place until at least September 30. The recent reports and leaks suggest the federal government may simply choose not to extend the measures.
Even if all 3 of those measures were gone, Canada’s mask mandate for airports and air travel would most likely continue for a while longer. Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos is said to be pushing for the mask mandate to stay in place at least until after the Thanksgiving holiday break (Canadian Thanksgiving is Monday, October 10).
Feature photo: Arild Vågen / Wikimedia / CC By-SA 4.0
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
