The United States opened its border Monday to Canadians who want to drive over to go shopping or to their condos in Florida or Arizona. To get in, you have to prove you’re been vaccinated. Period.
Coming back is something else. As well as your vaccination card, you have to present a negative COVID test to be allowed in. If you don’t have one, they send you back to Detroit, or Niagara Falls. N.Y., or Watertown or wherever in the U.S. and unless you want to book into a hotel and wait for the results of a drug store test, you have to cough up anywhere from $250 to $600 U.S. to get one done quickly enough that you’ll be able to cross in time to be home by midnight.
Now, if you talk to the nincompoops in Ottawa who come up with these rules, they will say they want to make sure that by driving into the U.S. you haven’t been exposed to COVID. The fact that it takes anywhere from six days to two weeks for COVID symptoms to show themselves after you’ve been infected shows how stupid that regulation is.
Here’s the best one. If you’re going to be in the U.S. for three days, or less, you can get the test done BEFORE you leave Canada and then present it at the border when you come back. This proves exactly nothing.
This is nothing but harassment of citizens by their government. This is exactly the same thing as the stupid rule enacted earlier, the one that dictated when you flew back to Canada from wherever, you had to stay in a COVID hotel for three days. It was something else that did nothing but piss people off.
I think the reason that particular rule withered and died is because people caught on that after you cleared customs, if you just got your luggage and walked out of the terminal there was nobody there to stop you. In fact, because you had done nothing wrong, there was no reason why anyone could stop you. The government just let that go; this will probably be the case this time too.
But in the meantime, how does it make you feel to know that your government does not have your best interests at heart. It just wants to drive you crazy – for no reason other than it can.
