OTTAWA, April 30 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday that his government is open to stricter penalties for travellers who violate the mandatory quarantine rules.
However, Trudeau said his government will not introduce stricter quarantine measures for people crossing the U.S.-Canada land border as demanded by Ontario, Canada's most populous province.
"We are always looking at doing more enforcement, at stepping up on the penalties on that, and we'll continue to work with the provinces on that," Trudeau said at a press conference in Ottawa on Friday. "We know that importation through the borders is extremely low in terms of cases in the country."
But Trudeau said his government will acquiesce to Ontario Premier Doug Ford's demand to temporarily suspend the arrival of international students from overseas.
In a letter to Canada's Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair and Minister of Health Patty Hadju on Thursday, the Ontario government asked the Trudeau government to implement a mandatory three-day hotel quarantine program for people travelling across the land border with the United States.
"In the past two weeks, over 150,000 people - not including essential commercial truckers - have crossed Canada's land borders. This includes dozens of individuals who crossed between April 24, and April 26, 2021, after travelling from countries where direct flights to Canada are currently banned. This is not just an Ontario problem - it is a Canada-wide problem," said the letter.
Unlike travellers arriving in Canada on commercial flights, travellers crossing the land border are not required to book a three-day stay at a hotel to await their COVID-19 test results but are allowed to quarantine at home if they can prove that they have a plan for their 14-day quarantine period.
They must also present a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of arrival. These travellers are also required to undergo another COVID-19 test eight days after crossing the land border.
Canada is making progress against the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are still a few tricky spots.
Daily case counts have declined 7 percent over the past week, to an average of below 7,900 cases, but the number of people experiencing severe and critical illness continues to rise, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada on Friday.
As of Friday afternoon, Canada reported 5,590 new cases of the COVID-19, bringing the cumulative total to 1,216,678 cases, including 24,208 deaths and 110,604 variants, according to CTV. Enditem
