Canada
This article was added by the user . TheWorldNews is not responsible for the content of the platform.

FIRST READING: Even ArriveCan’s supporters think it was a disaster

The app was designed to speed up customs arrivals, not police vaccine passports

The ArriveCan app pictured on September 22, 2022.
The ArriveCan app pictured on September 22, 2022. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET (and 9 a.m. on Saturdays), sign up here.

Alberta, the land of giant pysankas, giant perogies and giant kolbasa, has just installed this, a statue of a giant Cheeto grasped by fingers stained by telltale orange dust. The effigy was funded in whole by PepsiCo, the owner of the Cheetos brand, and was installed in Cheadle, Alta., a small hamlet of roughly 80 people just east of Calgary. PepsiCo’s explanation for the location was that the name of the hamlet is a homonym for “cheetle,” the orange dust that coats Cheetos.
Alberta, the land of giant pysankas, giant perogies and giant kolbasa, has just installed this, a statue of a giant Cheeto grasped by fingers stained by telltale orange dust. The effigy was funded in whole by PepsiCo, the owner of the Cheetos brand, and was installed in Cheadle, Alta., a small hamlet of roughly 80 people just east of Calgary. PepsiCo’s explanation for the location was that the name of the hamlet is a homonym for “cheetle,” the orange dust that coats Cheetos. Photo by PepsiCo Foods Canada

Sign up to receive the daily top stories from the National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.

By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You may unsubscribe any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300

TOP STORY

Only days after the ArriveCan app stopped being a mandatory requirement to enter Canada, witnesses barraged a parliamentary committee with testimony that it cost the economy billions while doing almost nothing to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Even among witnesses who supported the retention of ArriveCan, there was a consensus that its use as a COVID-screening measure was an alienating perversion of the app’s original intent as an optional means of speeding up customs processing.

“We are pleased that we can now go back to focusing on the original intended purpose for ArriveCan, and that is to support the continued modernization of Canada’s customs processing,” Trevor Boudreau, government relations manager at Vancouver International Airport, told a Tuesday meeting of the Standing Committee on International Trade.

The sentiment was echoed by Monette Pasher, president of the Canadian Airports Council. The CAC was an early supporter of a smartphone app to speed up customs processing, only to see ArriveCan co-opted as a mandatory means of checking vaccination status — a measure she explicitly blamed for lengthy airport delays in the early months of 2022.

“Fusing public-health checks with the customs process has unfortunately shrouded the benefits that this technology can deliver,” she said. “ArriveCan can be part of the solution, rather than the problem, but only if it’s used correctly.”

Most of the hearing, however, was taken up by witness accounts alleging that ArriveCan’s employment as a public-health tool took a scythe to the Canadian tourism economy while repeatedly failing to deliver on its singular purpose of stopping the cross-border spread of COVID-19.

“It became apparent in spring of 2022 … that many of the measures were not really making sense,” Zain Chagla, an infectious disease specialist at McMaster University, said of the federal government’s adherence to policies such as vaccine passports and mandatory quarantine for asymptomatic individuals.

Chagla said that border controls were defensible in the early months of the pandemic, but that supporting evidence for the measures quickly dissipated following the introduction of mass vaccination, as well as the rapid spread of more infectious variants such as Omicron.

By early 2022, infections and hospitalizations were way down, and most transmissions were now occurring within Canada rather than as a result of international travel. Added to that was the realization that even a double dose of the vaccine would have “limited efficacy” after just 20 weeks.

All of this, said Chagla, “really impacted the use of proof of vaccination policy to limit transmission associated with travel.“

When Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, a Bloc Québécois MP, asked Chagla how ArriveCan might be “improved” to better function as a public-health measure, the doctor’s basic answer was that it couldn’t.

“Two doses, even three doses, even four doses, there will likely be a breakthrough rate that is significant,” said Chagla.

Vaccine passports, he added, are “not something that is going to be effective in the foreseeable future.”

Where the data was somewhat more reliable, however, was in the economic damage suffered by cross-border tourism in 2022. 

Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati — a vocal opponent of ArriveCan — told the committee that while Canadian tourism numbers in his community had rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, American visitation was still half of what it was in 2019.

“We point our fingers squarely at the border measures, including ArriveCan,” he said.

Beth Potter with the Tourism Industry Association of Canada similarly said that while Canadians had enthusiastically returned to vacationing, American travellers were still conspicuously absent.

“International spending is down 53 per cent compared to 2019,” she said. As a result, the Canadian tourism sector will likely pull in only about $80 billion for 2022, as compared to the $105 billion earned in 2019.

Said Potter of ArriveCan: “I am far from convinced that it was an effective tool for controlling the entry and spread of COVID, and I know how much it caused problems for travellers and for tourism businesses.”

  1. A person holds a smartphone set to the opening screen of the ArriveCan app.

    Months after everybody knew it was pointless, the Liberals finally kill ArriveCan

  2. None

    How Canada stupidly bet its border economy on ArriveCAN — a glitchy $25M app

IN OTHER NEWS

One of the most notable things about Monday’s Quebec provincial election was how lopsided the result was as compared to the popular vote totals. Francois Legault’s Coalition Avenir Quebec won 41 per cent of the vote, but claimed 72 per cent of the seats – the largest Quebec majority government in a generation. Electoral reform types can usually be expected to pipe up after an election yields a result they don’t like, but they’ve been particularly vocal after this one. To which Legault replied that he obviously will not be making any changes to the system that helped make him the most powerful politician in Canada. “There’s no electoral system that’s perfect,” he said.

And thus, does Legault join the ever-lengthening list of politicians who once promised electoral reform while in opposition, but changed their mind while in power. In the 2018 election, Legault promised to introduce an electoral system in which 45 of Quebec’s 125 ridings would be parsed out based on proportional representation – but a bill setting out as much soon fizzled out in the national assembly.  

Set the date! King Charles III has announced that his coronation will be June 3. He’s been King of Canada ever since Queen Elizabeth II died, of course, but the coronation is meant to put an extra-official seal of approval on his role as Head of State. Presumably, Canada will mark the austere occasion with another one of those holidays where civil servants stay home and the rest of us go to work.
Set the date! King Charles III has announced that his coronation will be June 3. He’s been King of Canada ever since Queen Elizabeth II died, of course, but the coronation is meant to put an extra-official seal of approval on his role as Head of State. Presumably, Canada will mark the austere occasion with another one of those holidays where civil servants stay home and the rest of us go to work. Photo by Ian Vogler/Getty Images

It was only three months ago that First Reading broke the news – first uncovered by National Post reporter Bryan Passifiume – that NAV Canada was attempting to hide the movements of the prime minister’s jet from publicly accessible flight trackers. The move – which was done quietly and without explanation – was a little suspicious given that said flight trackers had repeatedly gotten Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into trouble, most notably when he was caught clandestinely taking an RCAF jet to Tofino on Canada’s first-ever National Truth and Reconcilation Day. Anyway, Passifiume just discovered that NAV Canada has reversed the order (possibly because we kept making fun of them for it).

A female officer in the Canadian Armed Forces has been accused of sexual misconduct. During a NATO mission off Portugal, the unnamed executive officer of HMCS Kingston was relieved after “an alleged incident of inappropriate conduct of a sexualized nature.” The Canadian Armed Forces, of course, has a massive problem with sexual misconduct (including allegation of misconduct levelled against senior officers who have explicitly vowed to fight sexual misconduct), although most of the higher profile cases thus far have usually had men as the accused.  

Get all of these insights and more into your inbox every weekday at 6 p.m. ET by signing up for the First Reading newsletter here.