by Jim Byers
Last updated: 6:57 PM ET, Thu April 22, 2021
Faced with a rise in COVID-19 variants in south Asia, the Trudeau government is banning direct commercial flights from both India and Pakistan for 30 days.
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced the policy during a press conference on Thursday (April 22) and said the ban will take effect tonight (April 22) at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu said half of the people who are testing positive for COVID-19 after arriving in Canada on a plane are coming in from India, even though India flights account for only 20 per cent of air traffic. Passengers coming from Pakistan are also testing positive at higher rates than average, Hajdu said.
Alghabra said there are no flights coming in from Brazil at the moment but Canada won't hesitate to ban further commercial flights if the data supports it.
Hajdu said the measures were approved because a "disproportionately high degree of positive travellers" are arriving from those two countries.
"It's a significant volume," she said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Quebec Premier Francois Legault earlier in the day had asked the Liberal government in Ottawa to "take further measures to limit the spread of the virus."
Both leaders said they support the current testing and quarantine measures Canada has in place, but that they're "concerned about the growing number of cases attributed to variants, which arrived in Canada through international travel."
In their letter to Trudeau, Legault and Ford said that "there is an urgent need to address issues with testing and quarantining at the borders, including falsified COVID-19 testing documentation, travellers opting [for] fines over complying [with] quarantine requirements, or travelling via private vehicle/plane to avoid quarantine, among several other areas of concern," they wrote.
"While it is crucial that the transport of essential goods is not hindered by border measures, it is likewise crucial that all non-essential travel be curtailed. The introduction of stricter measures for travellers crossing at land borders is a significant step to achieve that goal and ensure that collectively we are doing all we can to protect our citizens."
Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole also urged the Liberal government to take action on flights from countries with high levels of variants.
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