There were a couple of notes around the border and quarantines yesterday that I thought bear some additional note, particularly in light of the rhetoric we’re hearing. The first is that it looks like as many of a third of air travellers are able to avoid hotel quarantine and the Public Health Agency of Canada won’t provide a breakdown of figures as to why. There is a fairly obvious answer to this, which is that as part of the hotel quarantine programme, the government also allowed for a metre-long list of exemptions that are applicable to these travellers, because remember that there is ostensibly very little non-essential travel happening right now – I heard a figure that travel volumes are about five percent of what they were pre-COVID. Given how many of these hotel quarantine exemptions have to do with certain essential travel reasons, it should not be a surprise that as many as a third of these travellers are able to bypass that system. The fact that there are as many exemptions as there are should be up for debate, however, because it does undermine the whole point of quarantine, but it’s hard to have that discussion when every time you turn around, someone else is demanding another exemption – and it really doesn’t help when the party in the Commons howling that the border is too lax is at the very same time trying to get an exemption for returning snowbirds.

And then there is the question of enforcing the Quarantine Act, and we find that Alberta hasn’t signed onto the Contraventions Act, which makes it easy for their police to do the enforcement, and to issue fines for those who break it. (Saskatchewan also hasn’t signed onto the Act, but there are no airports currently open to international travel in that province). And this is completely baffling, because you would think that the provincial government would want to empower their peace officers to do the enforcement work if they are so concerned about variants coming in over the borders that they would want to ensure that they are actually enforcing quarantine orders in the province, but apparently not. This makes it all the more difficult to swallow Jason Kenney’s insistence that the federal government hasn’t done enough about the border – they have clamped down as much as they are really able to under the constitution, and they have empowered the provinces to enforce quarantines, but oh, Alberta refuses to take responsibility for doing so, while they complain.

First, no gov't in Canada has worked harder to make international arrivals easier and to accelerate exit from quarantine than AB's.
Second, Kenney's chief of staff skirted a closed border
Third, Kenney has all the power he needs to quarantine any and all arrivals into Alberta. https://t.co/wNNGf4JabC

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) May 5, 2021

This is a continuation of what I've been saying for a while: Alberta has all of the power it needs to impose much stronger measures on arriving travelers, international and domestic. It's chosen not to do so and, generally, has acted to reduce not increase scrutiny. https://t.co/KIioAknFI6

— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) May 12, 2021

I will also note that the fact that Ontario has signed onto the Contraventions Act means that their own complaints about quarantines and lax borders are all the more hollow. They have all the tools they need to enforce the orders, and they are also largely refusing and blaming the federal government. And worse, nobody is holding them to account for their failures to exercise their own powers in their own areas of jurisdiction to do so – especially not the media. This is a problem, but hey, keep writing stories about “finger-pointing.” That’ll help.

Good reads:

• When asked during Question Period, Justin Trudeau said he plans to get a second dose of AstraZeneca once it’s his turn to do so.
• 655,000 more doses of AstraZeneca are slated to arrive next week, even though most provinces have now halted its use for first doses.
• Maclean’s walks through what we know so far about second doses of AstraZeneca.
• Marc Garneau plans to travel to Iceland for another series of meetings one day before his 14-day quarantine is up – but still in the rules – and CP cites “confusion.”
• The government is using the budget implementation bill to restore a section in the Elections Canada Act about knowingly making false statements in an election.
• The Commissioner of Elections says his office investigated some 400 allegations of false statements made during the last election.
• The Canadian Forces reports it has only increased the share of women in its ranks by 1.3 percent over the past five years.
• The RCMP are worried about the rapid growth of hateful content and ideologically-motivated violent extremism happening online.
• Yves-François Blanchet is calling on the government to avoid an election at all costs, but his party voted against the budget (which is a confidence measure).
• Jagmeet Singh wants the government to stop selling arms to Israel.
• Ontario’s Auditor General found that the Ford government didn’t properly track some $4.4 billion in pandemic spending, especially around front-line pay.
• The Economist Party assures you that getting the first dose of AstraZeneca was the right choice, and explains the rationale in terms of positive externalities.
• My column looks at the lost opportunity the Senate had to do good work during the pandemic, the loss of which will ultimately do long-term damage to the institution.

Odds and ends:

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