Monday’s reopening of the Canada-U.S. land border is sparking a mixed reaction among Canadian business leaders: They’re excited that people and not just goods will be crossing the border again but are wary of remaining red tape.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Business Council of Canada say the Canadian requirement for returning travellers to provide a recent, negative molecular test is an unnecessary obstacle to kick-starting business travel and tourism.
They say proof of vaccination is all that should be needed and the test requirement should be scrapped.
They argue that the continued testing requirement is too cumbersome for Canadian business travellers wanting a quick visit to an American destination, and too expensive for families who want a vacation or reunion with loved ones.
“If we believe, as we should, that being fully vaccinated is the best way of minimizing risk, we should be trusting the vaccination systems. We should be monitoring what’s taking place in terms of outbreaks in the two countries,” chamber president Perrin Beatty said in an interview.
“It’s a competitive disadvantage to Canada and North America to have rules that are inconsistent with where most of the world is moving to,” said Goldy Hyder, the president of the Business Council of Canada.
While the U.S. will not require travellers to show a negative COVID-19 test, the Canadian government is not waiving that requirement for citizens and permanent residents when they enter Canada.
That means that when the land border opens for the first time to non-essential travellers since March 2020, it will not be accompanied by an end to a negative COVID-19 test requirement for Canadian travellers.
Beatty said the response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States 20 years ago offers the government a good lesson in risk management.
After the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon, the Canada-U.S. border was slammed shut. It quickly reopened because both governments realized that trade and the flow of goods and people across the border all needed to resume, but with tighter security measures in place.
Canada and the U.S. realized they couldn’t stamp out terrorism, so they “adopted a risk management approach that said, ‘What we will do is we’ll focus on the areas of highest risk. We’ll use intelligence,”‘ said Beatty.
“But the government treated COVID in a very different way, one that was unco-ordinated, and one that wasn’t based on risk management.”
Meredith Lilly, the Simon Reisman Chair in trade policy at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, said it might be some time before the impact of border closures and various lockdowns will be known on a key aspect of international trade — labour mobility.
“We have all just been subjected to the world’s largest experiment in digitalization. Many of us have been forced to learn how to operate in the digital environment and not travel to do work that once required us to be in person,” said Lilly.
“I don’t know that we yet fully understand the consequences of ΓǪ whether that is going to impact the liberalization of labour mobility, where people were mega-commuting and where we saw labour mobility as kind of a big, important part of 21st-century globalized trade.”
Lilly said the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the new border security and anti-terrorism measures that followed could prove instructive in the years ahead.
For example, she said day trips between the two countries dropped dramatically, the result of what became known as “the unfriendly border phenomenon in which travellers opt to forgo trips out of reluctance to face heightened scrutiny.
The expense and inconvenience of getting a PCR test could prove discouraging. That could have a damaging effect on tourism, leading to a decline in shorter, more spontaneous trips, said Lilly.
Larger companies might be able to absorb the cost of tests, but smaller businesses might not be able to shoulder them, she added.
Hyder said the government needs to have more faith in the ability of vaccines to stop the spread of COVID-19 or at least weaken its impact on people who might contract it.
“We have to have a new approach to the way we manage risk and we see risk. And I think Canadians should be rewarded with their compliance on the vaccines,” said Hyder.
“If the only people moving around are fully vaccinated people, it is time that we trust the vaccine, and we recognize that the endemic nature of this means we have to coexist with this.”
Brian Kingston, the president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, said the auto industry is ready to take advantage of whatever new flexibility unrestricted land travel will allow, given that the integrated industry and its supply chain straddles the Canada-U.S. border.
“We saw continued movement of parts and finished vehicles throughout the pandemic, which is all very positive. However, we have had challenges with the movement of personnel,” said Kingston, citing engineers and researchers.
“There have been challenges with respect to the rules around the border, in particular the definition of what is an essential worker and the exemptions that were provided.”
While travelling by plane was always an option, the fact that so much of the industry is clustered around the Windsor-Detroit border meant that simply created planning headaches while generating extra expense, he said.
“Something comes up. You have to visit a facility, or fix a piece of machinery. It was just an extra burden to have to go to an airport and fly into the U.S.,” said Kingston.
“Having that in the rear-view mirror — it’s great.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2021.
MONTREAL – The employers association at the Port of Montreal has issued the dockworkers’ union a “final, comprehensive offer,” threatening to lock out workers at 9 p.m. Sunday if a deal isn’t reached.
The Maritime Employers Association says its new offer includes a three per cent salary increase per year for four years and a 3.5 per cent increase for the two subsequent years. It says the offer would bring the total average compensation package of a longshore worker at the Port of Montreal to more than $200,000 per year at the end of the contract.
“The MEA agrees to this significant compensation increase in view of the availability required from its employees,” it wrote Thursday evening in a news release.
The association added that it is asking longshore workers to provide at least one hour’s notice when they will be absent from a shift — instead of one minute — to help reduce management issues “which have a major effect on daily operations.”
Syndicat des débardeurs du port de Montréal, which represents nearly 1,200 longshore workers, launched a partial unlimited strike on Oct. 31, which has paralyzed two terminals that represent 40 per cent of the port’s total container handling capacity.
A complete strike on overtime, affecting the whole port, began on Oct. 10.
The union has said it will accept the same increases that were granted to its counterparts in Halifax or Vancouver — 20 per cent over four years. It is also concerned with scheduling and work-life balance. Workers have been without a collective agreement since Dec. 31, 2023.
Only essential services and activities unrelated to longshoring will continue at the port after 9 p.m. Sunday in the event of a lockout, the employer said.
The ongoing dispute has had major impacts at Canada’s second-biggest port, which moves some $400 million in goods every day.
On Thursday, Montreal port authority CEO Julie Gascon reiterated her call for federal intervention to end the dispute, which has left all container handling capacity at international terminals at “a standstill.”
“I believe that the best agreements are negotiated at the table,” she said in a news release. “But let’s face it, there are no negotiations, and the government must act by offering both sides a path to true industrial peace.”
Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon issued a statement Thursday, prior to the lockout notice, in which he criticized the slow pace of talks at the ports in Montreal and British Columbia, where more than 700 unionized port workers have been locked out since Nov. 4.
“Both sets of talks are progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved,” he wrote on the X social media platform.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Employers and the union representing supervisors embroiled in a labour dispute that triggered a lockout at British Columbia’s ports will attempt to reach a deal when talks restart this weekend.
A spokesman from the office of federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has confirmed the minister spoke with leaders at both the BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514, but did not invoke any section of the Canadian Labour Code that would force them back to talks.
A statement from the ministry says MacKinnon instead “asked them to return to the negotiation table,” and talks are now scheduled to start on Saturday with the help of federal mediators.
A meeting notice obtained by The Canadian Press shows talks beginning in Vancouver at 5 p.m. and extendable into Sunday and Monday, if necessary.
The lockout at B.C. ports by employers began on Monday after what their association describes as “strike activity” from the union. The result was a paralysis of container cargo traffic at terminals across Canada’s west coast.
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint against the employers for allegedly bargaining in bad faith, a charge that employers call a “meritless claim.”
The two sides have been without a deal since March 2023, and the employers say its final offer presented last week in the last round of talks remains on the table.
The proposed agreement includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term along with an average lump sum payment of $21,000 per qualified worker.
The union has said one of its key concerns is the advent of port automation in cargo operations, and workers want assurances on staffing levels regardless of what technology is being used at the port.
The disruption is happening while two container terminals are shut down in Montreal in a separate labour dispute.
It leaves container cargo traffic disrupted at Canada’s two biggest ports, Vancouver and Montreal, both operating as major Canadian trade gateways on the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
This is one of several work disruptions at the Port of Vancouver, where a 13-day strike stopped cargo last year, while labour strife in the rail and grain-handling sectors led to further disruptions earlier this year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
