OTTAWA - Estevan Mayor Roy Ludwig and Weyburn Mayor Marcel Roy are among the elected mayors from land border communities calling for restrictions to be eased.
Mayors from British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick have banded together to urgently ask that the federal government drop all testing requirements for all fully-vaccinated travellers at the Canada-U.S. land border.
In an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the border mayors called to end the testing now.
The letter points out that “border communities have been at the forefront of the federal strategy and have paid a heavy price with the land border being closed to all but essential travel for 20 months. Even now, the land border remains under very strict testing guidelines that are not justified by current science and are out of line with public health officers’ mandates.”
Additionally, the letter highlights that in March, Canadians will have full capacity in NHL games with 20,000 fans with no vaccine passport or testing requirement, but fully-vaccinated American tourists will not be able to cross over the border in their own family car without unnecessary, expensive tests administered by a health professional.
The letter makes clear that “border communities have suffered greatly during this pandemic and that the government acted quickly to put these measures in place, and must act quickly to remove them in these early days of March.”
