Despite Canada’s advisory not to travel abroad during the pandemic, snowbirds have been able to easily book flights and head south.
But now those snowbirds face major hurdles returning home, thanks to tough new travel measures announced by the federal government on Friday. Soon, air passengers will be required to take a COVID-19 test upon arrival and spend up to three days of their 14-day quarantine in a designated hotel — which could cost them upwards of $2,000.
“I’m not going to pay $2,000 a person for three nights. That’s ridiculous,” said Canadian snowbird Claudine Durand, 50, of Lachine, Que., who’s spending the winter in Florida.
Other snowbirds agree, which is why some of them are attempting to find ways around the rules — either by prolonging their stay or attempting to rush home before the new measures kick-in.
Canadian snowbird Joe Lynn of Milton, Ont., is hoping to beat the clock.
He and his wife had planned to stay at their rented condo in Barra de Navidad, a small town on the western coast of Mexico, until the end of March. But a day after learning about the coming travel rules, they booked a flight home for Wednesday.
Canadian snowbird Joe Lynn and his wife are staying in Mexico as they wait for the federal government to announce when it will implement a new hotel quarantine rule. (Submitted by Joe Lynn)
“Four-thousand dollars is a lot of money, andwho knows if it stops there? Is it $4,000 plus HST?” Lynn, 68, said about the hotel fee, which he calculated for two people. “I’m on a pension.”
Adding to Lynn’s sense of urgency is the prospect of dwindling flights. Prompted by the government, Canada’s major airlines have cancelled all flights to Mexico and the Caribbean beginning Sunday through to April 30.
Although he managed to book a flight home with a Mexican airline, Lynn is still unsure if he’s in the clear, as he doesn’t know when the hotel quarantine rule will take effect. The federal government only offered a vague timeline on Friday, stating that the rule will be implemented “as soon as possible in the coming weeks.”
“No idea what’s going to happen. … They could put me straight into a hotel” after arriving in Canada, said Lynn.
He said he understands why Ottawa has imposed strict new rules to discourage travel, as highly contagious variant COVID-19 strains continue their global spread.
But Lynn feels it’s unfair to impose those rules on travellers who left the country before they were announced. He argues that the added hotel stay should apply only to people who choose to travel abroad now and are aware of the repercussions.
“Why not just pick a date and say, ‘These are the rules from this date?'” Lynn said. “If you want to go out and you want to come back and pay two grand or more, at least you know in advance.”
Should I stay or should I go?
Not all snowbirds are rushing home. Some instead plan to extend their stay at their sun destination, in hopes that the new travel rules will be lifted by the time they return to Canada. Typically, Canadian snowbirds can spend about six months abroad without facing repercussions, such as losing their provincial health coverage.
Travel insurance broker Martin Firestone said the majority of his snowbird clients who travelled to the U.S. Sunbelt this winter have contacted him to extend their medical insurance so they can stay longer at their destination.
“They have no desire to stay in a Motel 6 for three days at $2,000 per person,” said Firestone, of Travel Secure in Toronto. “Their attitude was, ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to stay down and walk on the beach?'”
That’s the attitude of Canadian snowbird Claudine Durand, who’s spending the winter with her husband in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. They came to Florida in December and shipped their RV across the border with plans to drive it home at the end of March.
WATCH | Ottawa brings in new quarantine rules to discourage international travel:
Ottawa isn’t banning non-essential travel; it’s making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible. Now, in addition to existing requirements, returning travellers will need to quarantine in a hotel for three days at their own expense, at a likely cost of at least $2,000. 2:33
At this point, it’s unclear if the federal government will also impose a hotel stay for travellers entering Canada by land.
But if it does, Durand said she and her husband will remain in Florida for as long as they can, in the hopes of avoiding the hotel fee.
“Two-thousand dollars per person in a hotel room? I’ll pay that to stay in Florida for an extra month.”
Derek and Susan Houghton of Ottawa plan to stay put in Florida until they can travel home without having to face hurdles, such as a pricey quarantine stay in a hotel back in Canada. (Submitted by Derek Houghton)
Canadian snowbird Derek Houghton of Ottawa has a similar plan. He and his wife, Susan, are scheduled to fly home in March for medical appointments and then return to their winter home in Sarasota, Fla.
But now that the couple face a looming hotel bill among other travel measures, they’ve decided to remain in Florida for now.
“That’s too big a hill to climb,” said Houghton, who’s set to return home for good in April. But if the hotel rule is still in place by then, he said he can extend his trip by another month, in the hopes that he’s in the clear by then.
“It’s like being confined in paradise for an extra month.”
Houghton said he also hopes that Canada’s strict travel restrictions will be lifted at an earlier date for someone like him, who already received the COVID-19 vaccine in Florida.
“People like us who have a vaccination certificate from the [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], why wouldn’t we get a break on some of these onerous regulations?”
Currently, travellers who have been vaccinated abroad are still subject to Canada’s quarantine rules.
LANGLEY, B.C. – Police in Langley, B.C., say one person is dead in a crash between a car and a motorcycle on Highway 1 that shut down the route for hours.
Mounties say their initial investigation indicates both vehicles were travelling east when they collided shortly before 4:20 a.m. near 240 Street on the highway.
The motorcycle rider died from their injuries.
Highway 1 was closed for a long stretch through Langley for about 11 hours while police investigated.
RCMP say their integrated collision analysis reconstruction team went to the scene.
The Mounties are asking anyone who witnessed the crash or who may have dash-camera footage from the area to call them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A court has been asked to declare Lake Winnipeg a person with constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of person in a case that may go further than any other in trying to establish the rights of nature in Canada.
“It really is that simple,” said Grand Chief Jerry Daniels of the Manitoba Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which filed the suit Thursday in Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg.
“The lake has its own rights. The lake is a living being.”
The argument is being used to help force the provincial government to conduct an environmental assessment of how Manitoba Hydro regulates lake levels for power generation. Those licences come up for renewal in August 2026, and the chiefs argue that the process under which those licences were granted was outdated and inadequate.
They quote Manitoba’s Clean Environment Commission, which said in 2015 that the licences were granted on the basis of poor science, poor consultation and poor public accountability.
Meanwhile, the statement of claim says “the (plaintiffs) describe the lake’s current state as being so sick that she is dying.”
It describes a long list of symptoms.
Fish species have disappeared, declined, migrated or become sick and inedible, the lawsuit says. Birds and wildlife including muskrat, beavers, duck, geese, eagles and gulls are vanishing from the lake’s wetlands.
Foods and traditional medicines — weekay, bulrush, cattail, sturgeon and wild rice — are getting harder to find, the document says, and algae blooms and E. coli bacteria levels have increased.
Invasive species including zebra mussels and spiny water fleas are now common, the document says.
“In Anishinaabemowin, the (plaintiffs) refer to the water in Lake Winnipeg as moowaakamiim (the water is full of feces) or wiinaagamin (the water is polluted, dirty and full of garbage),” the lawsuit says.
It blames many of the problems on Manitoba Hydro’s management of the lake waters to prevent it flushing itself clean every year.
“She is unable to go through her natural cleansing cycle and becomes stagnant and struggles to sustain other beings like animals, birds, fish, plants and people,” the document says.
The defendants, Manitoba Hydro and the provincial government, have not filed statements of defence. Both declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Daniels said it makes sense to consider the vast lake — one of the world’s largest — as alive.
“We’re living in an era of reconciliation, there’s huge changes in the mindsets of regular Canadians and science has caught up a lot in understanding. It’s not a huge stretch to understand the lake as a living entity.”
The idea has been around in western science since the 1970s. The Gaia hypothesis, which remains highly disputed, proposed the Earth is a single organism with its own feedback loops that regulate conditions and keep them favourable to life.
The courts already recognize non-human entities such as corporations as persons.
Personhood has also been claimed for two Canadian rivers.
Quebec’s Innu First Nation have claimed that status for the Magpie River, and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Alberta is seeking standing for the Athabasca River in regulatory hearings. The Magpie’s status hasn’t been tested in court and Alberta’s energy regulator has yet to rule on the Athabasca.
Matt Hulse, a lawyer who argued the Athabasca River should be treated as a person, noted the Manitoba lawsuit quotes the use of “everyone” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“The term ‘everyone’ isn’t defined, which could help (the chiefs),” he said.
But the Charter typically focuses on individual rights, Hulse added.
“What they’re asking for is substantive rights to be given to a lake. What does ‘liberty’ mean to a lake?
“Those kinds of cases require a bit of a paradigm shift. I think the Southern Chiefs Organization will face an uphill battle.”
Hulse said the Manitoba case goes further than any he’s aware of in seeking legal rights for a specific environment.
Daniels said he believes the courts and Canadians are ready to recognize humans are not separate from the world in which they live and that the law should recognize that.
“We need to understand our lakes and our environment as something we have to live in cohesion with.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
OTTAWA – MPs on the public safety and national security committee voted unanimously to launch an investigation into an alleged Russian ploy to dupe right-wing influencers into sowing division among Americans.
A U.S. indictment filed earlier this month charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a US$10-million scheme that purportedly used social media personalities to distribute content with Russian government messaging.
While not explicitly mentioned in court documents, the details match up with Tenet Media, founded by Canadian Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who is identified as her husband on social media.
The committee will invite Chen and Donovan to testify on the matter, as well as Lauren Southern, who is among the Tenet cast of personalities.
The motion, which was brought forward by Liberal MP Pam Damoff and passed on Thursday, also seeks to invite civil society representatives and disinformation experts on the matter.
Court documents allege the Russians created a fake investor who provided money to the social media company to hire the influencers, paying the founders significant fees, including through a company account in Canada.
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers.
Following the indictment, YouTube removed several channels associated with Chen, including the Tenet Media channel.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
