July 11, 2022
“You have been picked randomly to take the covid test,” said the Canadian border agency officer, handing David and his two children covid test boxes. They drove from Durham NC crossing to Canada via the Thousand Islands Bridge into Ontario. That was David’s introduction to Canada, after four years of absence.
He and the children travel with Canadian passports, all had three covid vaccine shots, and filled out the ArriveCan document successfully. So what more does the government want? Do they have Covid? The government just did away with random testing at Pearson and other airports in Canada because of the huge delays. If you have a government mandate based on science, as our PM claims, all Covid mandates are based on science, how come you do not enforce it at airports but enforce it at border crossings by car? This is utter nonsense.
The one good thing was that the entire conversation at the border took five minutes, but the agent left them with an ominous warning to take the supervised tests on the first day upon their arrival and submit them in twenty-four hours, or a fine of $5000 may be levied.
To put it in context, my son David and the two children came to visit us for a few days at the cottage that is on an island accessible by boat. And they were told to take the covid tests with a person supervising via an audio/visual internet connection. On this remote island, the internet is sparse and slow, and sometimes non-existent. Have the government policy wonks considered all the potential circumstances where they may have to administer this wretched Covid test?
So David made appointments for all three of them for the next morning; each appointment was scheduled for twenty minutes by the government.
I listened to the conversation the next day when the government officials, three different ones, instructed David and the children, aged nine and twelve; to take out the info sheet from the Covid testing box; fill it out with their birthdates; addresses, etc. and then swab their mouths on two sides for three seconds each and each nostril for fifteen seconds and the government officials counted the time down.
Then they put the labels on the test tubes; put the swabbed sticks back into the tubes in the right direction; etc. and place the test boxes in the fridge (a weird suggestion since the last time we came back to Canada and FedEx picked up our tests. The driver told us the FedEx truck was unrefrigerated). Like you were in kindergarten. And then they were told how to submit the repacked boxes. Two of them said to get FedEx to pick it up (as if FedEx would send a boat to an island), but the third one said Lifelabs and Shoppers Drugmart are places where you can drop off the boxes. Seemed to me the interviewers needed additional training; the instructions provided by the three people should have been identical.
A couple of interviewers asked David what time it was as the interview was taking place (Canada has three time zones), a strange question; not knowing where in Canada he was and what difference it made, although the information was available. The border guard asked David where the cottage was for his stay in Canada. The IT people developing this program should have provided location info for the interviewers if they were worth their salt (the question showed the interviewers could have been all across Canada and did not know where David was).
This lack of coordination by the agencies delivering ArriveCan and testing reminded me of a similar situation that happened to me when I came back from the US in May. Although the border guard told me I do not have to quarantine, I received a robot call every day for fourteen days upon my return, asking me about my quarantine location. Assuming the border guard punched in the right information, why had the government follow-up program kept calling me? Does the government contract with the lowest cost IT companies that may not have the best track record? Or, perhaps, government officials never test-drive their creations.
Another ridiculous aspect of the experience David went through is that he never received the result of the tests. He stayed less than a week, but by the time FedEx picked up the packages and the lab developed the results, he left the country. He just told me he never received the results and it is a week after arrival. The entire exercise is a total waste of time and a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Yes, vaccinated travelers to Canada may have Covid. But the effort required for, and the inconvenience caused by, testing far outweighs the benefits of finding out how many people entering Canada. Covid is community-spread today in Canada, far more than by people arriving from outside the country.
If the government wants to test arrivals to Canada, it should test all arrivals, including those by airplanes, via highways, and boats, and should make sure that all the agencies administering this process are well-coordinated. Just my opinion.
andrasthehun.ca 