TORONTO – POLITICS – The third of COVID-19 is impacting Canada and the world. In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford has shutdown as much as allowed the Ontario Manitoba and Ontario Quebec provincial boundaries.
Today, the Premier states: “In the last two weeks, we have sent the federal government three urgent letters requesting immediate action on the borders. The Premier also appealed directly to the Prime Minister last Thursday.
To date, we have received no formal response to our requests and there has been no indication that any further action is coming to stop the importation of variants into Canada.
Over the same two-week period, over 150,000 people came into Canada through our land borders and more than 65,000 through our airports. As well, 35 international and 23 domestic flights from outside Ontario landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport with COVID-positive passengers. Many of these planes carried multiple people infected with the virus and exposed an unknown number of other travellers arriving in Ontario.
These cases and countless others could have been avoided had action been taken sooner. We are once again pleading with the federal government to impose stricter measures at our borders, including banning all non-essential travel, implementing pre-departure PCR testing for domestic flights and closing the quarantine loophole at land border crossings.
More can and must be done. We cannot sit back and watch the fourth wave of COVID-19 walk across our border.”
