Federal Travel Guidelines | “People are still really confused”

Confusion, decline in interest, impacts on sales: the “vagueness” surrounding the implementation of mandatory COVID-19 screening tests for all travelers arriving in Canada by plane from all countries except the United States mine the morale of many players in the travel industry. Ottawa, for its part, ensures that it has a clear plan that takes into account the “capacity” of the various airports.

Henri Ouellette-Vézina
Press

“The phones have stopped ringing. It was a direct and immediate effect. And we also had a lot of cancellations, ”says Anthony Cirino, president of the Universal Travel Club Agency.

For him, the federal directives surrounding screening on arrival have created general confusion among the population. “People are still really confused, they don’t understand. Several people ask us if they will have to isolate themselves for two weeks, in short, it lacks clarity. And there, people just stopped booking, although we had a good movement in recent weeks, “continues Mr. Cirino.

At CAA-Quebec, the director of public affairs, Nicolas Ryan, also confirms that the instructions have created a certain “uncertainty” in the clientele, especially for shorter-term trips. “Right now, with the way the measures have been put in place, there is still a bit of vagueness around that. But it is our role as an agency to disentangle it, because indeed, communication has not always been extremely clear, ”he continues.

The same goes for the co-founder of the Dessine-moi un voyage agency, Isabelle Eon. “It seems blurry to a lot of people. Even for us, sometimes it’s not easy, especially since no two countries have the same conditions or the same standards and that can change from week to week. In short, it blew everyone away. It froze our activities again, ”laments the businesswoman.

At the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal (ESPUM), Professor Roxane Borgès Da Silva affirms that the directive “was decreed quickly, in an emergency, without thinking about operationalization”. “It makes it so that there is nothing quite clear for people. We should have thought about the strategic dissemination of the message upstream, ”she observes.

Various scenarios

In the office of the Minister of Health, Jean-Yves Duclos, we deny lack of clarity, referring instead to “four return scenarios”, depending on his country of origin and his vaccination status. If a citizen first returns from one of the 10 countries affected by the travel ban attributable to the Omicron variant, they will have to be tested at the airport upon arrival, whether or not they are vaccinated. Whether his result is positive or negative, he will still isolate himself for 14 days at home or in a quarantine hotel.

For all other countries it is slightly different. Someone returning from France, for example, will be tested either at the airport or at home, depending on the “testing capacity” of each of the airports. To carry out his test at home, he will be given the necessary equipment and a subcontractor will then come to collect everything to bring it to the laboratory. The person must remain isolated until obtaining a negative test. In the case of an unvaccinated person, however, the 14-day quarantine will apply, even if the test result is negative.

When he was asked if he knew when and how these mechanisms would be implemented, Minister Duclos was cautious on Monday. “Between last Wednesday and last Friday, we already had a 60% increase in testing capacity across the country. There are regional differences, of course. We are encountering situations with local airports, but things are going well and over the next week, the next few days, we will have other announcements of additional capacity increases, ”he replied to the media.