Not only does ArriveCan’s mandatory entry application not cause any passenger delays at the airport, it would even speed things up for passengers, says the federal Minister of Transportation.
“There is no evidence whatsoever that [l’application] ArriveCan causes any problems, ”repeated Minister Omar Alghabra, who appeared virtually Friday afternoon before the parliamentary transport committee.
“If we didn’t have ArriveCan, the arrival process would take longer, because you would have to do it manually. ArriveCan actually helps reduce congestion […] If we suspend ArriveCan today, we will have substantial complications and other delays, ”he continued, in front of very skeptical opposition politicians.
“You seem to be the only one who thinks that ArriveCan is the ultimate application,” replied Bloc Québécois MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval.
The mandatory entry form is “an international annoyance”, according to Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman. “People have been put on house arrest because of a bug! “, she launched, in reference to the quarantine requirements sent by mistake to certain travelers respecting all the rules.
As reported The dutyvictims of this app bug who managed to get in touch with federal public health learned that they could actually ignore messages mistakenly sent by ArriveCan, which has been updated approximately 80 times since its inception.
The portal has been harshly criticized by its users and experts. The union that represents border services officers, for example, estimates that up to 30% of travelers did not enter their information at the border, disrupting the work of officers. Minister Omar Alghabra replied with his own statistics on Friday: 95% of travelers would be in compliance, he assures.
A Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) official estimated that only 190 tickets were issued for not using the ArriveCan app, mostly to individuals who are “repeat offenders” who oppose sanitary measures.
The situation is improving
” Experiences [de passagers] reported in the media are unacceptable and should not be tolerated,” said Minister Alghabra nonetheless. He assures us in passing that the complaint mechanism of the Canadian Transportation Agency is still working well, despite the significant backlog.
He argued that many of the recently documented problems at airports, such as lost luggage or the long delays imposed on travelers to retrieve it, are in fact the responsibility of the airlines.
Instead, the Minister presented the situation as being the result of the post-pandemic flight resumption, even greater than that observed in the United States, but which would be improving since July.
“I am pleased to see encouraging results, such as the fact that only 2% of flights scheduled at Canada’s four largest airports for the second week of August have been cancelled. […] That’s down from 5% in the first week of July. »
The federal government suspended mandatory COVID-19 testing on arrival for a few weeks, again in place outside airports since mid-July. More than a month later, the results are still not available on the government site, under the pretext that they “are subject to verification”. They should appear there “in the coming weeks”, promises the PHAC in an email to the To have to.