Canada eases border requirements

BELLINGHAM — Crossing the border into Canada will be easier starting Feb. 28.

Several Canadian media outlets, including CTV News, reported that the Canadian government is dropping the expensive, pre-arrival PCR molecular requirement for vaccinated travelers at the end of the month. Travelers will still need to take a pre-arrival test, but can instead choose to use the rapid antigen test approved by the country they are coming from to show they don’t have COVID-19.

Travelers into Canada could still be randomly selected to be tested further, but won’t be have to quarantine while waiting for results.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, the rapid antigen test will not be accepted if taken at home. It needs to be done by a health care entity or a laboratory. It also needs to be done within 24 hours of arriving at the border. Travelers will also need to continue submitting information through the ArriveCAN app.

With the quicker, less expensive antigen tests, it should be easier for Americans to cross the border into Canada, as well Canadians to get back home after visiting places like Whatcom County.

Traffic volumes have been sluggish throughout 2022 at the Lynden, Sumas and two Blaine border crossings, according to data from Cascadia Gateway Data website. At all four crossings the average is under 5,000 passenger vehicles a day going both north and south, about half as much as in December when nonessential travel restrictions were first lifted by Canada.

Laurie Trautman, director at the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University, said the drop-off in traffic coincided with the reinstatement of the PCR testing requirement as cases of the omicron variant surged on both sides of the border.

Since they didn’t end testing altogether, Trautman said this is a baby step, but she suspects it is the first one toward scrapping testing for vaccinated travelers altogether.

“I anticipate we’ll see a bump with the removal of PCR, like we did back in December, but are still a long ways off from pre-pandemic volumes,” Trautman said in an email.

One other change that Trautman said was a big deal is removing the quarantine requirement for unvaccinated children.