Canadian Mayors Are Calling On Trudeau To End Travel Testing Requirements This Month

Canada's pre-entry testing requirements are being called out by mayors from seven provinces and they want the government to scrap them early this month.

On March 3, local leaders of Canada's border communities sent a letter to Justin Trudeau that "urgently" asked for an end to all testing requirements for fully vaccinated travellers at the Canada-U.S. land border.

"Even now, the border remains under very strict testing guidelines that are not justified by current science and are out of line with public health officers' mandates," they said in the letter, which was shared with Narcity.

The leaders claim that despite the federal health minister having said that border measures are under constant review, department officials have told border industries that the restrictions won't be reviewed until the end of March.

"The time to end testing at the land border is now," they said.

They also called the fact that sports games will be allowed at full capacity in March while people need an "unnecessary, expensive" COVID-19 test to enter Canada an "absurdity" that will weaken the confidence Canadians have in the government.

"Your government acted quickly to put these measures in place, and your government must act quickly to remove them in these early days of March," the local leaders said.

The mayors of cities, towns and communities in New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. co-signed the letter.

Some of those leaders had previously called on the federal government to end the testing rule for travellers crossing the Canada-U.S. border and claimed that the rule might actually cause people to not come to Canada.

The federal government recently eased some travel rules, which means rapid antigen tests are now allowed to be used for the pre-entry test requirement instead of only molecular tests as of February 28.